


Reject

by Aryashi, relationshipcrimes



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Akira Kurusu Is Doing His Best, Ann Takamaki Has The Only Brain Cell, Canon-Typical Violence, Happy Ending, M/M, Mandatory Ryuji Loving Hours, Mental Illness, Passive Suicidal Ideation, Phantom Thieves Realize Ryuji Sakamoto Is Actually That Deep, Seizures, You Will Get Better. You Have No Choice.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-01-29 16:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 35,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21413518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aryashi/pseuds/Aryashi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/relationshipcrimes/pseuds/relationshipcrimes
Summary: When Ryuji begins to lose control of his own Persona, no one, least of all Akira, knows what to do. And it doesn't help that Ryuji isn't cooperating at all.
Relationships: Kurusu Akira/Sakamoto Ryuji, Persona 5 Protagonist/Sakamoto Ryuji
Comments: 123
Kudos: 424





	1. Chapter 1

It starts in Futaba's Palace.

Skull already isn't a fan. All the puzzles and lasers make him feel like he's ten steps behind the rest of the thieves, barely hanging on while Queen and Joker barrel through them like they're kid shit. Panther at least looks confused, but sometimes she'll get a light in her eyes like she just pieced it together right before Joker clicks that last button. Skull doesn't get that.

It's fine. He knows he's not the brains of this operation; he's here to kick ass and shoot lightning at shadows. Any idiot can beat up shadows, and luckily 'any idiot' could be printed on Ryuji Sakamoto's business cards. If he had business cards. Do people still use business cards?

"Focus up, Skull," Joker calls from the front.

"Dude, you've gotta stop reading my mind. It's freaky as shit."

Joker does a jaunty little smirk and salutes. Skull's heart beats against his chest. It does that a lot in the Metaverse. But that's normal. High stress thievery an' all.

Joker gets the jump on another shadow, and it spits out one of those bastards in the coffins that’ll turn you into a rat. Skull, having been a rat, can say with total confidence that it sucked and he doesn’t ever want it to happen again. So when it’s his turn in the rotation, he reaches for the part of himself where he knows Kidd is, cries “_Persona!”_ and summons him to do some real damage.

_Come on, _Skull thinks to himself, _don’t be such a screw up. Turning into a rat again ain’t cool._

And… well, Captain Kidd comes. It doesn’t start as drastic as that. But Skull feels something. He wishes he was better at words, or paying more attention. It’s like… friction? Something got caught in the gears and it took a second to grind them through.

But even before Skull can start worrying about it, the feeling passes and Kidd arrives. Skull forgets it even happened when Joker does a one-handed backflip over Kidd’s sweeping blow, which collides solidly with the side of the shadow’s ugly face. “Dude!” Skull yells, as the shadow staggers backwards. Joker smirks, whirls, throws his dagger straight into the shadow’s forehead.

“Skull!”

Skull doesn’t even think: he pours half a thunderstorm into Joker’s blade, channeling everything he’s got into the makeshift lightning rod, and the shadow swells as it nearly blows up from the inside with the force. Skull grabs Joker by his giant collar and throws them both out of the way half a second before the shadow explodes into chunks of shadow-dust, spare electricity, and fluttering yen. Static crackles like confetti.

And then it’s quiet, and Skull’s still got Joker half in his arms as they stare at the shadow’s remains.

“That was fun,” says Joker. He sounds supremely content to have Skull half-supporting his weight, like some kinda weird ballroom dip.

“My hair is a frizzy mess with all this static,” Panther complains from the back-up team.

Skull lets go of Joker because Joker doesn’t seem to be moving anywhere. “Dude, I know it’s looks super cool and all but why you always gotta be doing fancy shit like that?” he complains. “I coulda hit you, and then where’d we be?”

Joker straightens his own overcoat’s lapels as if it’s nothing. “I knew you wouldn’t,” he says. “I know I can count on you.”

“‘S no reason to go be doin’ backflips over Personas!” Skull cries, but Joker’s grin just looks more unrepentant, so Skull gives it up, muttering about crazy leaders and their show-off stunts. _I know I can count on you_. Skull can feel his chest tighten like a coiled spring. Skull doesn’t think about the odd moment again.

*

It escalates in Mementos.

They’re taking care of a few requests down in the subway tunnels, getting settled into Navi being around as the navigator. A stalker here, an abusive shithead there, the guy hurting cats especially gets everyone’s blood pumping. Navi’s smart, and more than being smart, she’s a natural with Necronomicon. There’s a couple hiccups early on when she doesn’t get what her powers are telling her, or she doesn’t know how to tell them fast enough, but they adjust quick and she adjusts quicker. She gets really good at yelling over the sound of spells. The first time Navi interrupts Joker in the middle of an order, she apologizes the instant the shadow goes down, but half a second later they’re all congratulating and thanking her for saving their asses.

By the end of the day, she’s bossing them around while Joker smiles at her indulgently. Well, most of them are smiling at her indulgently. Not just Joker. Skull just happened to notice Joker doing it first, is all. “I said your _other_ right, Skull!” she cries, when a blast of wind nearly clips him. “Ugh, no, no! I said it _resists_ electric—”

Yeah, he knows! Skull didn’t forget, okay, he just got a little confused! “_Megaton Raid_!” he cries, and nearly staggers with the force of that Kidd slams the shadow into the ground, and then pops into ashes like a squeezed grape.

“Oh!” says Navi, as the dust settles. “I forgot about physical… I suppose you’re good for something after all, Skull!”

Something in Skull’s chest squeezes. Panther snickers at Navi’s cheeky tone. Joker’s already raiding the shadow’s remains for cash and supplies, the freakin’ klepto, but Skull sees his shoulders shake like he does when he does those little silent laughs and smiles with his eyes.

And for one moment, Kidd just hangs there in the air over where the shadow used to be. He doesn’t vanish like he always does, like he’s supposed to. Joker bends down to pick up a sliver of gold, his back open and exposed under Kidd’s yellow stare. Kidd’s giant, claw-like hand flexes; his nails scrape together like knives.

And then Skull blinks, and Kidd vanishes.

“I’m so happy Navi’s finally coming out of her shell,” Panther whispers to Skull when they pile back onto the Monabus.

Navi’s fighting with Fox over his hoard of art supplies interfering with her hoard of portable game consoles. Mona’s getting increasingly exasperated with either one of them keeping a hoard of anything under his seats. Navi sticks her tongue out at Fox, who seems perplexed by this human ritual. She looks really happy, actually. “Yeah,” Skull says, and really means it.

*

The first time it happens for real—

…The first time it happens in a way Skull can’t ignore, the Thieves split up to flee an army of shadows The _Beauty Thief _(god, what a shitty codename) unleashed on them by opening an impossible door. Skull’s confused, annoyed, pissed, and a bunch of other words he’d probably know if he spent more time reading. People were already getting antsy about how long it was taking to change Okumura’s heart, and now there’s all this bullshit in the way? 

_Shitty goddamn cat, dumbass fight, had to get in his face, didn’t you, Skull? Yeah, that sure helped, made everything so effing EASY!_

Skull ducks behind a console, and the red holograms telling him to hurry up and get back to work add a real sense of irony to the whole mess. He’s _trying_! But something keeps screwing up, and his teams keep getting wrapped up in bullshit.

_Yeah, ‘something’. Wonder what it could possibly be. _

He’s watching a tin can shadow robot roll past and waiting for his chance to move again when Skull’s heart jackknifes in his chest and the pain doesn’t stop. He gasps, tries to pull in oxygen around the sudden stabbing in his throat, but it’s not working, the pain is almost blinding and he can’t pass out here.

Skull spots a hallway, a dead end with a door leading into a breakroom. None of the robots ever get breaks, so he sprints for it right as his vision starts going red. His bad leg lights up like a grease fire but he makes it inside and the door slams shut behind him. Okumura’s cognition of a breakroom is covered in inch-thick dust, and Ryuji might have time to call him an asshole for that as soon as he can breathe again. 

The stabbing pain gets worse. It’s like someone’s jerking the knife around, scraping all the bones and shit in the way. He squeezes his eyes and breathes. Forces air past the pain. Air makes everything better, focus on breathing first, breathe breathe _breathe. _Ignore the fire, that’s not important, what’s important is getting oxygen to his stupid muscles. All his senses turn off and he sticks air into his body whether his chest likes it or not.

The pain builds, and builds, and Skull thinks _This is bad this is really bad it’s not working _when—

“_Oi! Skull! Where’d you run off to_?” Navi’s voice says in his ear. Scared the hell out of him the first couple of times it happened. “_Actually, don’t answer that, I know where you are._ _I can see you lurking there doing nothing!_”

“_Is Queen with him?_” asks Panther’s voice, broadcasted through Necronomicon.

“_Nah, Queen’s down the other hallway. But she’s not a dumbass, so she can wait for me to get to her. Hey, Skull, I’m talking to you!_”

Skull takes ragged breath. It actually goes in and comes out. Holy shit. He’s not dying. This would be a super lame way to die. Also it’d probably traumatize the shit out of Navi if she had to hear him die over Necronomicon’s communication line.

“_Don’t ignore me!_”

Skull coughs. “Geez, Navi, let a guy catch his breath.”

“_Yeah, but_ _Joker’s being a mother hen again_,” says Navi’s voice.

“_I’m worried_,” says Joker’s voice.

Skull can picture it: Joker doing his rounds after an ambush, appraising them all for wounds, looking them all up and down with his careful gaze even when they say they’re fine, Panther brushing him off with a cheerful laugh. The way he passes out more bandages than they need, more Recov-R’s than is really necessary.

“_Move, Skull!_” Navi says. “_Queen’s already on her way. We can’t wait for you forever!_”

“I’m movin’, I’m movin’,” says Skull, and stands up. A bolt of pain lances up his hip and he hisses. His head spins.

“_Well, move faster! I’m getting more shadow readings just down the hall and they’re coming this way!_”

Oh, _shit_—a shadow attack right after they’ve regrouped always sucks. Skull knows for a fact it’s one of the few things that pisses Joker off, even if Joker won’t admit it. He takes a step and his leg feels like it’s trying to tear the joint apart from the inside—piece of shit, can’t even hold his weight anymore, let alone run.

Eff that. He grips his steel pipe harder and moves faster. Ain’t no way he’s gonna let shadows mess with his team. They’re counting on him, aren’t they?

He can feel his own breath rattling in his throat, like a cog that’s come loose.

*

> **RYUJI**: yo ann  
**ANN**: It’s 11 pm  
**RYUJI**: can you get asthma even if ur not a kid  
**ANN**: Wh  
**ANN**: You can’t _get_ asthma  
**ANN**: ……………I think  
**RYUJI**: ????  
**RYUJI**: dont people get asthma from like, shitty dads smoking around their kids  
**ANN**: Oh my god really  
**RYUJI**: ????????  
**RYUJI**: did  
**RYUJI**: did you not know that  
**ANN**: Look if you wanted like, factual answers, you should have talked to Makoto  
**RYUJI**: i dont wanna die tho  
**ANN**: Haha  
**ANN**: Ok ok I looked it up just for you  
**ANN**: Apparently you can get your lungs messed up from a whole bunch of things!!  
**ANN**: Not just when you’re a kid either  
**RYUJI**: oh really?  
**RYUJI**: like what  
**ANN**: You could also google this yourself you know  
**ANN**: But like, uhhhh, asbestos?  
**ANN**: Like if you’re breathing in weird things?  
**ANN**: Also WebMD tells me that sometimes it’s genetic  
**ANN**: And also sometimes stupid things just happen  
**RYUJI**: so like  
**RYUJI**: you just live and then living hecks up your lungs and then you die?  
**ANN**: I guess so  
**ANN**: Apparently also sometimes people have trouble breathing because of panic attacks I guess?  
**ANN**: So like psychological reasons too  
**ANN**: Idk I’m not a doctor  
**RYUJI**: oh  
**ANN**: Wait a minute  
**ANN**: Is this about our biology homework  
**RYUJI**: no!  
**RYUJI**: i already did that!  
**ANN**: Lollllll  
**RYUJI**: ok maybe i didnt  
**RYUJI**: and maybe im pushin that off to the last second  
**RYUJI**: but if i WERE doing my bio hw i wouldn’t ask u for help with it unless i wanted an even worse grade than i already got  
**ANN**: HEY  
**ANN**: Just because it’s true doesn’t mean you should say it!!!!!!!!  
**ANN**: What do you wanna know about lungs for anyway then  
**RYUJI**: oh uh idk  
**RYUJI**: just curious i guess

*

Well, alright. Ryuji might be dumb in the head, but he knows when something’s up with his body. And he’s not gonna let that shit get bad. Injuries just get worse if you try and run with ‘em. Ryuji used to tell the track team first-years all the time to go sit it out, fix their injuries, save their health, and live to run another day. Used to piss Kamoshida off like nothing else. (Dick.)

Now Ryuji’s on a different team altogether, and he’s not gonna be a brash dumbass about it. He’s serious about this Phantom Thief thing, you know, even if that shitty cat thinks he isn’t. He’s serious enough to go to the school nurse if he gotta, so Ryuji knocks on her door during lunch. “Yo, Ms. Sugase!” Ryuji says.

Sugase looks up from her clipboard with the same level look she gives everyone. Her hair’s gotten shorter, though. “Oh. It’s you,” she says, before he can tell her he likes the new hairdo. She doesn’t quite sound happy to see him. “What is it?”

Behind her, Takeishi looks up from where he’s got one leg propped up on a chair, track uniform joggers rolled up to reveal the athletic tape he’s applying to his knee. Takeishi’s eyes narrow.

“Can I help you?” Ms. Sugase says pointedly, when Ryuji says nothing.

Takeishi breaks eye contact first. Somehow, it doesn’t make Ryuji feel like he’s won the staring contest, but that Takeishi’s dismissing him, like a bug that doesn’t deserve his time. “Tch,” says Ryuji, before he can stop himself.

“Sakamoto, I can’t condone you taking naps in my office if you’re not on the team anymore.”

Holy _shit_? The eff is her problem? Like she wasn’t the person who put him on the EMT stretcher herself, or gave him Gatorade when his electrolytes were low. She used to let him hang out in her office when he got too antsy during class and felt like he was going to bounce off the walls, but the second he’d off the team, suddenly he’s just a piece of shit skippin’ class, is that it? “Never mind,” Ryuji says, and Sugase’s eyes narrow. Takeishi pulls out another strip of athletic tape with vengeance. “Whatever.”

“Sakamoto, if you’re quite done blocking the door—”

“I got it, Ms. Sugase,” Ryuji says. “I’ll get outta your hair.” And like the delinquent he is, he hikes his bag up higher and puts his head down lower and slouches away.

*

It’s probably nothin’ big.

Kinda like how his history project due next week is nothin’ big, and he’ll just ignore it until it’s the night before and cram everything all at once. That’s how school works anyway, right?

He doesn’t like how much free time he has with his afternoons, because for ages that was Track Time, and how it’s just a whole fat lot of nothing. And it’s like he never really figured out what else he was supposed to be doin’ with himself, you know? What’s he gonna do—go to the library? He’s not a nerd. Cram school? Mom’s barely gettin’ him through Shujin with the cash they’ve got, and it’s not like cram’s gonna make Ryuji any less dumb.

He lurks around the arcade a bit. No matter how he stands, he can’t seem to get his hip to sit right. He tries sitting down. The pain starts crawling down his leg again.

He goes home instead.

There, he throws his duffel on the floor, collapses on the squeaky couch in the living room, and props his leg up like a effin’ invalid in a hospital TV show. It actually does help, but hell if it doesn’t look stupid. And now he’s bored as shit with four hours of homework to do, so he fiddles with his chat messenger instead. Pulls up Akira’s chat. Rereads the last couple of messages:

> **AKIRA**: Sorry, I can’t today. What about tomorrow?  
**RYUJI**: yeah man no problem  
**RYUJI**: give that gamer kid hell!!!  
**RYUJI**: but in a nice way you know what i mean  
**AKIRA**: Haha  
**AKIRA**: Thx ;)

That was yesterday. Maybe Akira’s shady doctor friend would know something about his asbestos-asthma? But then Akira would get all worried and then it’d probably be nothing in the end, anyway. Ryuji’s other leg is bouncing up and down like mad and he can’t seem to make it stop. He really, really wants to go for a run right now and keep running until all this nervous energy’s gone and he can stop thinking because, let’s be real, thinking’s never been his best feature. But he can’t because his effin’ leg won’t goddamn _heal_.

Hell with his stupid asthma thing.

Ryuji closes the messenger just as the apartment door opens and Mom comes in, looking tired and wrinkled, and spots him sitting with his leg propped up on the couch. She frowns.

“I’m home,” she says.

Dammit. He meant to sit in a less obvious position when he heard her come in. She never says anything about it anymore, but she’ll spend time worryin’ about him and his dumbass leg. It’s not even that bad today, just the background radiation sort of ache he gets when it rains. (Shit, he completely forgot that maybe the reason his leg’s being a little bitch today is because of the weather.)

Ryuji tries to pull his leg down from the pillow but in, like, a cool and chill way, not like he’s guiltily hiding the fact that all the rehab she paid for never really worked out. “Welcome home. How’s today?”

She smiles, but its thin. “Oh, just fine. Same as always.”

Translated, she means as shitty as always, but not in any kind of way she’s willing to talk about with him. It drives him nuts sometimes, how much his mom puts up with. “Yeah?” he says.

She’s taking off her shoes now, slow and careful, avoiding aches and pains of her own. Her uniform is washed and neat, but worn down in places. Frayed seams, thin stockings, hair escaping the severe bun she put it in this morning. Her bag goes up on the same hook as always, and the fake leather is peeling away in all the spots it bends, but it holds steady and carries everything it needs to just as good as the day she bought it. Ryuji respects that bag.

“Manami talked about her wedding again,” Mom says, like an olive branch.

“Does she ever talk about anything else?”

“Well, she is excited. Third time’s the charm, she says.”

Ryuji laughs, and his mom smiles, but this time it feels more real. Less acted out.

“Do you want to take first bath? I’ll get dinner started in the meantime.”

Ryuji wants to let her get first bath and say he’ll get dinner started, but he’s burned too much food to make that mistake again. So he says “Sure,” instead, and walks to the bathroom like his leg doesn’t hurt at all.

*

Asthma or no asthma, panic attacks or not, asbestos or not, shitty leg or not—they gotta get supplies and Skull isn’t gonna be the one to complain. He knows doin’ well in Palaces and junk is all in the prep, you know? You gotta have Mementos supplies before you can kick Okumura Foods robot ass.

Even if they gotta walk all over god damn Mementos because the Monabus effin’ _bailed_ on them.

It’s fine. He’ll ice his leg later. He’s been through worse. He won’t die.

It takes them nearly half an hour to convince Joker to let them split up and search for supplies in pairs, because they literally can’t cover the entire Mementos floor as one group without the Monabus carting them around, but Joker agrees eventually. And it even goes alright: Navi keeps them all connected via Necronomicon, and it feels like even though Skull’s partnered up with Fox, the rest of the team isn’t too far away. By the time they reconvene, everyone’s got a hoard of treasure to add to the pile, and everyone’s smiling, so hell if Skull’s gonna be the one to say he needs to sit down or his leg’s gonna split in half. He offers to carry their sack of pilfered loot.

Joker looks up from the stack of yen he’s counting, and his eyes flick down to Skull’s leg for just a moment. “I can carry it,” says Joker.

“Nah, it’s fine, give it here. You’re the one who spent all day coverin’ weaknesses.” (Since Mona’s not here to cover wind resistance anymore.)

“I can carry it,” says Queen.

“Hell no!” Like Skull’s gonna let the girls carry it when they’ve still got three guys on the team. “Hand it over, man.”

“You don’t have to take care of everyone else all the time,” says Joker.

“Speak for yourself, dude.”

Joker sweeps up his pile of yen, does another unnecessary coin trick across the backs of his knuckles, and disappears the stack into his pockets. “That’ll be enough,” Joker says, instead of responding. “We should head for the exit.”

“Speaking of,” Queen says, “didn’t Mona say something about not staying on one floor of Mementos too long?”

Panther frowns. “Yeah, he did. I wonder why… We always left whenever he told us to move, but I wonder if something bad happens if we stay too long?”

Fox, staring intensely at a goopy mass hanging from the ceiling, adds, “Perhaps it was a matter of caution? Shadows coming for us once we’ve made our presence obvious.”

Skull mutters, “Or he was makin’ it up.”

“Skull!” Panther says crossly.

“What! We’re just gonna take him at his word? I bet nothing bad happens even if we stay here for the rest of the—”

A chill runs down Skull’s spine.

Judging by everyone else’s faces, they all felt it too. Even Fox stops eyeing that glob of shadow on the ceiling. The air’s changed, suddenly colder, suddenly more hostile.

“What was that…?” says Panther.

Everyone turns to look at Navi. She laughs nervously. “Um. Powerful?”

That’s not Navi to not explain herself. Fox frowns. “How powerful? Comparable to a Palace ruler, would you say?”

“Like ‘it doesn’t even show up on the scale’ powerful,” says Navi. “But, uh... it’s getting closer.”

“...We’re leaving,” Joker says. He packs up everything in record time, and he sprints off like a flash with his sack of treasures over his shoulder like a real thief. The rest of them take off after him, following close as they can behind him. Skull’s not in the lead, by a goddamn longshot, but he’s keeping up with the back of the pack, next to Navi. She’s got the look of someone wearing the bravest face they can. A determined frown under her huge red goggles, but she’s running all wrong and her breathing’s shaky. Skull moves in closer to her.

“How far to the exit?”

Navi keeps her eyes forward, but she answers. “Far. At this rate we’ll be at the exit in—”

The sound of chains dragging across the floor rings through the tunnels.

“— twelve minutes! Whatever it is, it’s still five tunnels away from us! We can make it!”

The chains rattle again, like demented bells. Skull looks behind him, but all he can see is the darkness of Mementos stretching down the tracks. Skull looks ahead and tries to focus on running. The Thieves are a unit, all pointed towards one goal, getting the hell out of dodge as fast as their legs can carry them.

“What the _hell_!” Navi cries.

“What is it?” Queen says. She barely sounds winded and is running in perfect, long-legged form. Skull’s so out of shape he can barely glare at her.

“It’s picking up speed! I think it’s trying to cut us off—Joker! Go left!”

Joker skids and takes the next left hard. They’re following Joker through a left turn, listening to the chains get closer and closer when suddenly the sound of chains vanishes altogether, and there’s no noise left but their running feet on the concrete. Joker doesn’t slow down at all, which is good, because the chains might be gone but the air’s gettin’ colder.

“Three minutes to the exit!” Navi announces. “Whatever this thing is, it’s two-hundred meters away!”

“_Meters_?!” Skull yelps. He coulda sworn “five tunnels” meant at least a kilometer away!

“But the chains are gone!” Panther cries.

“I just see things, Panther! I don’t know what’s going on either!”

“Less talking! _Move_!” Queen shouts. Panther grabs Navi’s hand and puts on another burst of speed, and Navi nearly stumbles until Skull steadies her.

“One minute to the exit! The powerful reading is fifty meters off!”

If anything, _not_ hearing the chains is _worse_, because every time Skull turns around to look over his shoulder, he can’t see anything and it's _freaky_. “How is it so fast?!”

“Perhaps it has natural camoflau—”

“Run don’t talk, Fox!” Even those few words made Fox slow down and now Skull’s pushing him forward like he can physically make him run faster. Shit, shit, Skull’s definitely in the back of the pack now, but he doesn’t know if he could live with himself if he let any of the other slower runners get caught by whatever-the-hell this thing is.

“Fifty seconds! Twenty meters!”

Come on, Skull thinks. Come on, he’s supposed to be _good_ at runnin’, _come on_—

“Ten meters! Five meters!”

—they’re so close, they’re _right there_, he can _see_ the tunnel that takes them up to the escalators—

“Wait!” Navi yelps. Joker, goddamn him, actually slows down. “Wait, what’s going on? I’m getting the reading from… right where we are? It caught up with us, but...”

“What?” says Queen.

“Yeah, according to my scanners, the thing should be right on top of us by—”

And then the ceiling explodes.

Dust and the sound of infrastructure crumbling and chains, rattling, the _snick_ of knives against knives, Navi screaming in Skull’s ear through Neconomicon’s speakers. Someone’s yelling for them to run. There’s grit in Skull’s eyes. Smoke in his lungs. Where was Navi? Where’s Panther? _Where’s Joker_? Weren’t they both just beside him half a second ago? He can hear metal slithering across the ground behind him.

“I SAID _RUN_!” Joker’s voice bellows.

Skull bolts before he’s even picked a direction and he has no idea which direction that is. Everything is darkness and confusion, but he’s running, and despite all the shit Kamoshida heaped on him that day he didn’t make him forget how to run.

He’s sprinting, torn between keeping good running form and scrubbing the dust from his face, running literally blind, but the sound of chains is right behind him, not slithering slowly anymore. It clatters frantically against the tracks, it’s so fast, but the exit is so close, if Skull can just reach it before this thing does—

_“Skull! Stop! Turn around, you’re going the wrong way!”_

A bolt of magic wind hits him. Wind _sucks, _cuts through to Skull’s core in a way no other magic does, strips him down and hurts in a way he can hardly even describe to the others. It sends him flying, full seconds in the air, limbs pinwheelin’ like a cartoon, and then he hits the ground so hard he effin’ _bounces_ and skids on the cognitive concrete for a few seconds extra. It’s only thanks to Metaverse reflexes that he gets back on his feet. He finally blinks the dust out of his eyes.

It’s a shadow. Technically. The air around it seethes with energy, bloodstained leather floating freely off its body. The blood is bright red, still fresh, throwing off steam into the cold air of Mementos that grows even colder, even sharper, with the shadow’s presence. Around it, chainlinks clatter and all Skull can think is that they sound delighted, goddamn _thrilled _to have caught him alone. Its head is covered with a hood, as bloody as the rest, and all Skull can see through it is a piercing white eye. A vulture eye.

The guns, rusted red, point at him, and he only just dives out of the way of an attack that would have killed him. Two shots and it would have been over.

“_Skull! Hang on! Damn, I think it’s blocking your signal, I can’t pin your location down at all—stay wherever you are! We’ll find some way to get to you! Do not engage; I repeat, do _not_ eng—”_

When Necronomicon’s signal cuts out, Skull realizes he’s going to die.

Some days, Ryuji lies in bed and wonders if he can ever explain to his mom how much he loves her, because she’s really got to know and because he’s running on borrowed time. He should have died when his dad slammed him head-first into their dishwasher at age eight. Then he should have died when he opened his fat gob and Kamoshida raised his fist for the first time. Then he should’ve been kicked out of Shujin and left to die on the street when they pulled his scholarship. And _then_ he should’ve died in Kamoshida’s castle.

He doesn’t really know how to describe it, but he’s not lucky to still be alive. He’s just taking up space that he shouldn’t, using time that isn’t his, because someone else made the stupid decision to keep him around for a little while longer. He isn’t supposed to be here, y’know? This is all just a sorry mistake, and he figured the universe would come and correct it sooner or later.

If Skull weren’t such a big idiot, he’d accept the end with grace and his head held high.

But Skull’s just too god damn _stupid_ to go out with dignity.

“_Persona!_”

Captain Kidd explodes into being. “_Megaton Raid!_” Skull commands, and the subway tracks rattle under the force of Kidd’s power.

The shadow doesn’t even stagger. Oh, shit, Navi wasn’t kiddin’ about how powerful it is.

“Piece of _shit_!” Skull snarls. “Come on, then! _Ziodyne!_”

Lightning snaps. Blooms into thunder deep in Skull’s chest.

The shadow keeps coming.

He’s going to die.

This isn’t going to be like Kamoshida’s castle, where he thought he was going to die only for Akira to pull Arsene out of nowhere, or where he thought he was going to die only for Ryuji to manifest Kidd himself. There isn’t going to be a last-minute ditch that saves him. He’s not going to pass out and wake up to Ms. Sugase putting him in the ambulance. He’s not going to get out of this by his mother signing the divorce papers and fighting tooth and nail to keep custody of him.

There’s no more extensions. No more chances. This is it. He’s going to die. He can feel it in his heart.

But the thing about expecting something, about waitin’ around for the mistake the universe kept making to finally get fixed?

(It’s kind of a relief when it finally happens.)

The shadow points a gun directly at Skull’s head, and he thinks, _Well, this sucks ass. I’m gettin’ shot out back like a lame dog,_ and decides in that moment to die standing up. Waste of space like him at least gets to be the distraction that lets everyone else get away.

He hopes that nobody comes after him. If this is gonna happen, he doesn’t want anyone else to get caught in the crossfire. 

(He hopes that the Metaverse doesn’t leave a body for Akira to find.)

But as if to kick Skull in the dick one last time, his chest starts to burn. Violently, like back at Okumura’s Palace, chasing the air out of his lungs, stinging his throat with smoke, before he knows it he’s on his knees, because _of course _he goddamn is, no matter how much he wants to die standing up. He can feel himself start to retch, like his body does when he’s run too hard, and he can’t do anything to stop the reflex anymore; his chest convulses, and like bile, Kidd bursts out of him.

It _hurts_. It doesn’t feel like manifesting his true self. It feels like something got torn right out of him, is splitting apart, and it’s not cleansing fire like when he awakened but an acid burn crawling and squirming and he can’t get it out, it just settles deeper and rots him from the inside, hollowing him out.

Kidd flickers, juttering in and out of being, and then thrashes like he’s been struck with his own lightning, clutching his head, swinging wildly back and forth. Makes a goddamn pair of them, honestly. The shadow stops, like it’s confused. It’s got its long-barreled gun aimed right at Skull but doesn’t pull the trigger. When Kidd stops flickering, he manifests more solidly and more clearly than Skull’s ever seen him, and Skull has no idea what the shadow’s doing anymore because all he can see is Kidd’s back.

Kidd’s heaving. Long knife-fingers digging into Kidd’s own face. He thinks he can hear the screech of metal on Kidd’s bones.

Kidd’s fist whips around and slams the shadow into the wall before Skull can even see it happen.

The entire tunnel shakes. If Skull weren’t on his knees before, he’d have fallen right on his ass. Even the shadow bastard looks shocked, insofar as a one-eyed no-faced shadow can look, and struggles to stand back up from the small crater its body made in the wall. There’s a screaming in Skull’s ears that he doesn’t recognize and he prays it isn’t him until he realizes that it’s coming from Kidd, one long distorted human shriek through the sound of seawater and radio static; and then Kidd slams the bottom of his ship right into the shadow’s face with a _crunch_, and then again, and then again, like a schoolyard bully pounding some victim’s face into the dirt, like every other delinquent his teachers ever said Skull was. The shadow doesn’t even have a chance to run. The shadow’s hands jerk like death throes around its guns.

“Stop!”

Kidd reels back and slams his cannon-fist directly into the shadow’s face. Skull can hear something breaking between the shadow’s head and the wall behind it. The shadow drops its gun.

“Stop!”

And Kidd holds the thing’s head in place with his cannon and wraps his other hand around its neck and starts _pulling_, like he’s going to tear the neck right out from between the shadow’s head and shoulders and the roar deepens, like a wounded animal, echoing in Skull’s chest like it’s coming from his own mouth.

“_I said STOP_!”

Kidd lets go.

The shadow, for all its ooky-spooky scary bullshit, does the equivalent of an elegant scramble to get out from between Kidd and the wall, whirls once, and vanishes, leaving his dropped gun. Hell, Skull wishes he could do the same. The splitting acid-rot in Skull’s lungs hasn’t gone away and his head is _killing_ him, but he lets himself curl on the ground until his forehead touches Mementos’ metal tracks. He hadn’t wanted that. He hadn’t wanted this at all.

“Come back, Captain Kidd,” he says, and pushes himself back up. Kidd does not come back. Kidd’s still hanging in the air, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself now that the shadow’s gone. “Kidd. The hell. ‘s good. You beat the shit outta him, you can…”

Slowly, Captain Kidd’s head turns to look at Skull.

There’s no wildness in Kidd’s eyes anymore. He’s not screaming. It’s not the look of someone out of control.

It’s the look of a predator knowing exactly what he’s doing, and finding the prey he’s always wanted all along.

Skull scrambles and bolts before he even thinks, his body short circuiting into the shape it knows best. Run, run, run the hell away from _that, _but his leg was being a shithead before any of this happened and it gives out on him all at once.

Kidd doesn’t waste any time. As Skull falls, Kidd catches him the throat and jerks him into the air like a caught fish, holding him up one handed. Skull never thought much about Kidd’s nails before, and now the sharp metallic points of them on his skin is all Skull can feel, all Skull can remember, all there is in the universe. For a second, Kidd just holds him up by the neck. Time’s stuck. Nothing moves.

Captain Kidd starts squeezing.

It’s slow. The hand clamped down on Skull’s throat, long fingers wrapped completely around, thumb digging into his windpipe. The claws slice into Skull’s skin, and they’re like chips of ice. Skull reaches up, pulls against that hand. It’s like trying to bend steel. He can’t make it budge an inch. There’s spots in his vision, dancing floaty spots, the kind he used to get after he pushed himself so hard he collapsed at the end of the track, back on the tarmac, watching them like daytime fireflies on clear blue skies but in Mementos it’s so dark they stand out even more, bright flickers of glitter on smokey ugly black and he can feel his body begin to convulse—

His ass hits the floor. He doesn’t fall all the way back, but it’s goddamn close, only his survival instinct kicking in at the last moment. He sucks in air hard through his squashed windpipe even as his body coughs desperately, because the stupid thing can’t figure out whether it needs air or needs to reject it all at once. He can’t lay on his back, there’s danger here, he needs to…

Wait.

Captain Kidd is gone.

Skull’s heart thumps in his chest.

“This—” He chokes. His voice sounds like dogshit, raspy and strained. He can feel the words trying to force themselves out of his crushed, fleshy windpipe, his lungs are still on fire, and the imprint of Kidd’s fingers burn like cuts. Even breathing is painful—_like asthma, haha_—as he forces air down his crumpled throat.

He’s so glad he’s alone, and no one can see him collapse on the Mementos tracks from damage his _own Persona_ did to him.

“This isn’t asthma,” he whispers. “Is it.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe this whole seizure thing will still turn out to be nothing, y’know? Maybe it’ll just be a fluke and it’ll never happen again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for graphic descriptions of strangulation and suffocation in this chapter, and probably most chapters going forward. Stay safe!

Skull doesn’t know how long he spends on the floor. Time’s gone weird on him. But he doesn’t think it’s been that long when he hears frantic footsteps come running around the corner. He sends a quick thank you to the shadow, for knocking him so far away from the rest of the thieves. If any of them had gotten there any sooner—

“_Skull_!” Panther calls out, sprinting for him as fast as she can. She looks like she wants to full body tackle him into a hug, but screeches to a halt at the last moment. “Skull, wait, hang on—” she gathers herself up, says “_Persona!” _and Carmen springs into being.

Skull’s heart stops in his chest, but before he can even think she calls out “_Diarahan!” _Skull feels the healing magic wash over him, warmer than Makoto’s is, on the right edge of a burn. His throat opens up, his leg shifts from blinding pain into a rainy day ache, and the cuts all heal over in an instant. Nothing about Carmen feels any different, and as soon as the spell is cast she twists into the air and vanishes. Just like always.

Panther looks him up and down. “Is that enough? I can do it again, no problem.” And that’s a lie if Skull ever heard one, she must be on the edge of spent with all the magic she was throwing around.

“N—” Skull says, before he coughs. He coughs a lot, and even before he can get out his protest Carmen’s back and he gets another hit of Diarahan. The coughing stops and he actually manages to get some words out. “Come on, don’t baby me, I was gonna say I was fine.”

Panther looks at him like he’s a complete idiot. “Don’t be stupid,” she says, “You still don’t look fine after two heals.”

“Nah, look, I’m—” Skull heaves a deep breath and pushes himself up to his feet. He doesn’t sway. He _thinks_ he doesn’t sway. The ground’s tiltin’ a bit, though. “I’m good, see?”

Panther looks like she’s gonna protest at the top of her lungs again, but Joker puts a hand on Skull’s shoulder, which is weird because Joker’s not usually the touchy-feely one of the two of them. Damn, _is_ he swaying? His grey eyes are murky, like stormy, troubled weather, and for a long second Skull’s terrified he’s gonna ask if Skull’s alright like he’s a freakin’ invalid, some kinda crippled loser, or maybe Joker might even insist that Skull’s not good after all like he’s some kinda dead weight that needs his team to carry him.

“What happened?” Joker says instead.

What happened. What _did _happen? Skull doesn’t know. Captain Kidd flipped his shit. And now everyone’s here, and Kidd is gone. The shadow’s gone too. Everything is okay, right?

Kidd’s not coming back, right?

Skull snatches his pipe from where he dropped it in one sudden motion. “Should we even be talkin’ about this here?”

Fox nods. “I agree, it would be better to return to the normal world to discuss recent events. There is no sense in waiting around for that… abomination to return.

“Um, hello?” Navi says, waving. “It’s not like we’re not gonna see it coming, I sensed it through the ceiling. It’s long gone. According to my readings it’s not even on this floor anymore.”

“Even still.” Queen pats Skull on the shoulder. “I think I’ve had enough of Mementos today. We should regroup. Get our bearings back.”

Joker looks at Skull for a long moment, the kind of look that makes Skull feel like Joker’s reading his mind. “Meeting tomorrow. We’ll go over what happened.”

Skull swallows, and his throat burns.

*

When they exit Mementos and go back to the streets of normal Tokyo, Ryuji is hit with a crushing, horrible relief. He doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t think about why he’s relieved to be out of the metaverse, or why he’s so tired. He says a vague goodbye and doesn’t think they entire way home. It’s like fast travel. He blinks and then he’s home, in his bed. He blinks again and then it’s five in the morning.

His throat hurts. There’s only so much healing can do, even healing powered by magic cognition pscience. At least its a change of pace from leg pain.

Heh. ‘Change of pace’.

It’s not funny. Ryuji still laughs into his pillow, curled up tight with a white-knuckled grip.

*

As is tradition for their late-night Leblanc attic meetings where they’re not planning to go to Mementos, Ann brings twenty billion snacks, about ten billion of which are inhaled promptly by Yusuke, leaving only enough pocky, chips, fruit milk, Kit-Kats, and other tiny sugary cakes to feed ten marathoners on a carboload. Ryuji scrolls through the Phansite mindlessly and reads off the good ones to Akira, who hums noncommittally, as if that’s supposed to fool Ryuji into thinking that Akira is the kind of person who turns a blind eye to people’s sufferings. Akira will rattle off the details of every request with flawless memory two weeks from now when they hunt down the shadow in Mementos. By the time everyone shows up, Ryuji totally forgets to shut his phone off because Morgana’s still not here and they can’t start the meeting without everyone, and then he remembers: Oh, yeah, duh, Morgana’s _not here_.

Makoto opens her notebook and smooths out the pages, as if Makoto actually ever keeps any of the notes she takes during Thieves meetings. (She burns them for confidentiality. Ryuji knows because Ann gets to do it and Ann gets _way_ too excited about it.) “Alright. If we’re all assembled—”

“I get to name it!” Futaba cries.

“—I believe we should—pardon?”

“The dude with the chains!”

“If it’s a shadow, wouldn’t it have a pre-existing name?” Yusuke says.

“Well, Akira didn’t beat it up in a dark alley and steal its soul, so we don’t know what its name is, do we?”

“Yet,” says Akira.

“Okay, Akira didn’t beat it up in a dark alley and steal its soul _yet_, so until then I get to name it. I think it should be named Squirtle.”

“What? No,” says Makoto.

“No, c’mon, it’s funny! Like ‘I’m dying, Squirtle’!”

Makoto and Yusuke look at her blankly. Ann and Ryuji crack up simultaneously.

“Are we really going to call the most powerful enigmatic enemy we’ve encountered in Mementos thus far… _Squirtle_?” Makoto asks bleakly.

“We could also call it ‘Piglet’,” says Futaba. “Like, ‘pull the trigger, Piglet’.”

Ryuji sees, suddenly, the image of the shadow’s hand twitching, losing its grip on the gun. He stops leaning back in his chair and lets the chair front legs slam on the wooden floor. “C’mon, Futaba. Memes are fun but, like, it’s the dude’s name, you know?”

Futaba frowns. “So what? Are we gonna hurt it’s feelings?”

“I dunno! We might!”

“I don’t want to call out ‘Team, retreat from Piglet,’” Akira’s eyes are downcast so his glasses catch the light. Ryuji knows he does that on purpose.

“I’m not sure what relevance pigs has to any of this,” says Yusuke. “Did it have porcine features?”

“Uh… I guess it was wearing leather? That’s from pigs, right?” Ryuji blinks. “Wait, no, that’s not what Piglet—”

“Moving right along!” Makoto claps her notebook shut. “If we aren’t calling it… either of those, what will we call it?”

Futaba rocks in her chair, pushing herself back and forth with her feet while tucked up in her seat. “Okay, okay, what about a good old-fashioned, old-school name? What about ‘The Reaper’?”

“Ah,” Yusuke says, “Death, given form, coming for us if we hesitate… How appropriate.”

“It’s a Castlevania joke, Inari,” says Futaba.

The rest of the thieves turn to Ryuji, as if he has final say just because he had shitty luck and ran the wrong way. He scowls, but says, “Yeah, sure. Who cares what we call it anyway?”

“Apparently you do if you’re not gonna let me call it Piglet!”

“Ryuji,” Akira says, in that way he does, “what happened with the Reaper?”

“What happened?” says Ryuji, like a broken record. He has the sudden urge to stand up and start pacing, but he can’t do that because then it’ll look like he’s pissed off or something. He kicks back on the back legs of his chair again and rubs his newly-sweaty hands on his pants. “Uh, kinda self-explanatory…? Dude came after me and I lived.”

“Don’t give me that!” says Futaba, pointing wildly at him. “That guy’s power levels were _maxed_! And we all saw the way it laid a trap and split you off from the group! Ugh, I wish Morgana were here, he could tell us what—” and then she stops, and glances at Akira, who hasn’t moved an inch, hasn’t even seemed to register what Futaba just said. Makoto looks down. “—Uhhhh! I just think it’s really neat! Um, and it’s the most sentience we’ve ever seen from a shadow, so spill the beans, Ryuji!”

“Okay, cool, but it wasn’t smart enough to off me, was it?” says Ryuji angrily. Futaba’s excitement freezes on her face. Her shoulders hunch to make herself smaller. Ann’s giving him a wide-eyed stare. Oh, _shit_, he raised his voice without even thinking—at _Futaba_ of all people—_shit_— “I-I mean—look, he was scary, but it wasn’t anything. Maybe you got the wrong readin’...?”

“I didn’t,” says Futaba in a small voice.

“O-Oh. Okay. Uh… Yeah, I know, Futaba. You’re right.”

Futaba adjusts her glasses. “O-Of course I’m right. Are you gonna fess up the deets or what?”

“He just doesn’t want to admit he got scared and ran away like a girl,” Ann tells Futaba.

“Hey—!” says Ryuji, but Futaba giggles again at a joke at his expense and doesn’t seem quite so uncomfortable. Ann winks at him conspiratorially because she thinks she’s so cool for having defused his dumbassery and also thinks it’s cool to wink at people like a shoujo manga love interest, so actually Ryuji decides he’s fine with being the class clown. Hell if he didn’t spend the entirety of middle school as the school jester for his too-loud voice and constant fidgeting in class. “Whatever,” he says instead, and sighs against the back of his chair. His leg won’t stop bouncing. “Also, don’t act like there’s anythin’ wrong with runnin’ like a girl. You shoulda seen Shujin’s track girls back when they were around.”

“I’m a girl so I’m allowed to make ‘running like a girl’ jokes, you know,” says Ann.

“Not bein’ able to run is a _you_ problem, Takamaki,” Ryuji retorts.

Makoto clears her throat and everyone sits back up. “Maybe we should get back on track,” she says. “Ryuji, if you don’t know what it was, can you at least tell us what happened?”

“Sure,” says Ryuji’s mouth before he can think, because he let his guard down for two seconds thanks to Ann. “Dude jumped outta the ceiling, I got wound up and ran the wrong way—that one’s my fault, it’s not like it tricked me or anything. Then it got me with some wind magic, which was freaky, actually, like it knew what my weaknesses were, and then—”

—_and then I thought I was gonna die and my weird asthma attack happened again and then my own Persona had a seizure and broke the guy’s face and then my Persona tried to kill me._

He can see Kidd’s eyes. Bright. Alive. Rimmed round with sick yellow. He can see it like he’s still there, or like Kidd’s right in front of him in the real world.

“...and then?” Yusuke says, because Ryuji literally just stopped talking in mid-sentence and zoned out.

“Uh,” says Ryuji.

The Thieves peer at him like one unit from across Akira’s table—the Thieves, the _Phantom Thieves_, a real, honest-to-god team of delinquents like Ryuji. Maybe the first and only place Ryuji’s really ever belonged. And every single one of them has a Persona. Nobody else in the world—at least no one that Ryuji knows—has a Persona. Literally the only people on earth who’d understand what happened to him in Mementos are all gathered in this one attic, and every single one of them wants to hear what happened. He can see it already, as if he’s already told them: the shouting, the shock, the disbelief, Akira’s voice cutting through the sound and getting straight to the point. _Are you okay? Were you hurt? Do you think it’ll happen again?_

_Are you sure you’re okay to go back to Mementos next time? _

_Are you sure you’re okay to keep fighting?_

And what, Ryuji’s supposed to just sit here and tell them he’s hecked up over some weird thing he doesn’t even understand that might not even happen again—he’s supposed to just _let them down_ like that?

_Hell _no.

“—and then it just left,” says Ryuji.

Makoto frowns. “...Really?”

Oh, geez, Ryuji really doesn’t need Makoto and her big smart brain to come after his ass. “Yeah, really. It was really weird. But like, it really did just kinda rough me up and then, uh, go. On its own. By itself.”

Eyes go back to Makoto, who looks at Ann, who looks at Akira, who, as leader, does his leader-thing where he visibly thinks about it for a long second. Ryuji holds his breath.

“Maybe it had some other reasons for doing what it did, then,” says Akira, at length.

Yusuke nods contemplatively. “Perhaps it just wanted to scare us off. Can shadows be territorial?”

“So it was powerful and wanted to intimidate us, but maybe it didn’t actually want to hurt us…?” Makoto says.

“Enemies to friends to lovers, slow burn, 500k,” says Futaba. Makoto’s face goes red and she covers her face with her notebook.

“We need more information,” says Akira. “If we encounter it again, let’s be prepared. I’m heading to Untouchable and Takemi’s tomorrow. Text me your weapon wishlist or I’m going to get you whatever matches your outfit.”

“You always do that anyway, Akira,” says Ann.

“You’re welcome,” says Akira.

“Am I _not _supposed to choose my weapons based on aesthetics?” Yusuke asks. “Is it not part of the cognitive world that our cognition of the object determines its lethalness, and therefore is our opinion of its aesthetics not vital?”

“Uh, I just get whatever’s biggest,” says Ryuji.

“Whatever’s cutest,” says Ann.

“Whatever looks the most physically painful to eviscerate my enemies with,” says Makoto.

Futaba nods like this all fits exactly into her view of how the world works. “Style Stat Boosts.”

“And with that,” Akira stands up and puts his hands in his pockets, “Let’s go on our ways. I have a paper in English to work on.”

Ann smiles brightly. “Oh, that one’s not as hard as you think! Text me if you have any trouble, I actually finished it last night.” She does a little V for Victory pose.

Akira smiles. “Thanks,” he says, “Shouldn’t take too long. I got some of it done the other day.”

Ryuji tactfully doesn’t say anything, because while he was busy stalling on the History project he totally forgot about the English one. It’ll be alright, he can bullshit in English so long as he has time with a dictionary, especially because none of his teachers expect him to actually turn in anything that makes sense. He can only hope Akira isn’t talking about something due tomorrow. He’s probably not, Akira doesn’t let things sit to the last minute, but still.

“Ryuji?” Ann tilts her head.

“What?”

She frowns. “I _said _to let me know if you needed any help.”

“Oh, yeah, sure, sorry, just… thinking about stuff,” he says, like the worst liar who ever lived. The rest of the thieves have already left to either catch trains or wander across the street. He kicks away a bit of dust from the floor. His stomach growls.

“Ugh, I’m starving,” Ryuji says irritably. He feels like he’s gonna crawl outta his skin. He hates lyin’. He doesn’t even do it to his own mom, like some kinda goodie two-shoes. He swears Makoto lies to her own sister more than he lies to his ma. “Hell with it. I’m gonna grab some late-night grub.”

“Want me to make you something in Leblanc?” Akira asks.

“Nah, I wanna…” Clear his head after makin’ up some bullshit to his friends? Go for a run to burn off all his nervous energy? “...take a walk. I’m thinkin’ the ramen place if you’re up for it.”

Akira smiles. “Give me a sec. I could do with dinner that isn’t curry myself.”

“Do I just bring these snacks for nothing?” Ann says.

“You brought like, an entire dessert table! I need real food! Maybe shit that doesn’t give me a headache!”

“Ramen is barely real food, Ryuji,” Ann retorts.

“The place in Ogikubo is effin’ gourmet, dude. You haven’t even tried it. You should come with instead of livin’ off cake.”

Ann frowns. “No, I have a shoot tomorrow so I gotta sleep early—you’re really going to Ogikubo this late?”

Ryuji snickers. “What’re you, my mom?”

“Ew, don’t call me that!”

Ryuji waves off her glare. “It’s barely past nine. We’ll be fine.”

“We can walk you to the station,” Akira says.

“Oh, it’s okay, Akira, I’m going in the opposite direction, and it’s not actually that late. Just…” Ann doesn’t so much chew her lip so much as she seems to chew on her words before spitting them out: “I dunno. Stay safe, okay?”

“Sure thing, Grandma.”

“Don’t call me that either! Especially not before a shoot with Mika-chan! Ugh, now I’m going to be thinking about it all night… Akira, I don’t look like a grandma, do I?”

“What's wrong with being a grandma?” Akira says.

“Oh, I see how it is,” says Ann, tossing her giant blonde curls over her shoulder in mock irritation, flouncing away to the attic stairs like she’s really offended and doesn’t think she’s hot shit no matter what. “See if I care next time you go across all of Tokyo in the pitch black for a bowl of ramen!”

“It’s good ramen!” Ryuji says.

“We’ll text you if we die,” says Akira.

“No one is allowed to die!” Ann yells as she clatters down the attic stairs.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Ryuji yells back. Ann sticks her tongue out at him just before she disappears, and then she’s gone. “Geez, what’s gotten into her?” says Ryuji. “Next she’s gonna ask me if I need a water bottle and a nap or somethin’.”

“She’s just worried.”

Ryuji scoffs and kicks at the pavement. “Aight, enough waitin’ around! Let’s get that late-night ramen!”

Ryuji chatters about useless shit all the way to the Yongen-Jaya station, hopping all over the place, walking backwards, bumping shoulders with Akira and saying hi to the old couple that runs that shady second-hand place down the way from Leblanc, because, you know, when in doubt, just annoy the shit out of everyone around you, right?. Akira just smiles, and doesn’t say anything, and bumps Ryuji’s shoulder back.

The wildest thing is that Ryuji thinks Akira actually listens to all the shit he says. He gets the weird impression that Akira doesn’t just put up with him, but maybe even likes that Ryuji talks about jack shit? Akira’s a quiet guy, after all, you know? Akira doesn’t say much. And Ryuji talks a lot all the time but he doesn’t actually say a whole lot worth listenin’ to, either. But it’s a comfortable kinda quiet.

They get on the train heading out to their ramen place, and though its late the trains in Tokyo are never empty, or even less than half full. Still, its not like the crazy crush of people tryin’ to get to school or work in the morning, or home in the evening. There’s open chairs even. Ryuji lets Akira grab one and then hangs onto the bar above their heads and bounces up and down in place. Ever since he was a kid he liked standing up on the train. Keeping your balance, feeling the way it moved under your feet… Ryuji never gets tired of it.

Normally, he’d have tried to sit down anyway. ‘Cause it’s weird hovering over people on the train, right? It’s the kinda thing that leery dudes do when they’re, y’know, leerin’ over someone, tryna make ‘em feel small about themselves. Ryuji hates feelin’ like he’s doing that

It’s just that Akira can’t be hovered over. Or, more like, Ryuji could stand over Akira as much as he wanted, cause Akira just looks up at him with those stormy eyes of his and Ryuji knows nothing about this position makes Akira any less sure of himself. Akira’s not gonna be intimidated by jack shit and Akira’s not gonna think that like, Ryuji’s gonna beat him up in a parking lot because he’s standin’ over him. It’s like Akira trusts him or some shit.

Wow, he’s getting way too lost in his own head. The train ride isn’t long, but they had a couple stops to go and Ryuji is feeling the urge to chatter

“So? How’d it go with the arcade kid?” Ryuji says, nudging Akira’s foot. “Learn any badass cheats?”

Akira blinks. Ryuji nudges him again. Dude’s clammier than a clamshell sometimes, the way he doesn’t wanna talk about himself. Well, Ryuji ain’t gonna stand for it, and Akira knows it, so eventually Akira smiles his little ‘I think I’m so cool and suave by virtue of the fact that I think I can pretend to be cool and suave when actually I just got knocked for a loop’, but Ryuji ain’t fooled anymore. “I learned some… interesting strategies. I might have some ideas on how to beat that shadow.”

“Oh, damn, that whole thing about takin’ shootin’ lessons from a kid actually worked? Hey, make sure you show me too! I wanna climb those leaderboards myself.”

Akira smiles, and Ryuji’s glad he asked. Akira gets this weird look whenever Ryuji asks how he’s doing, or what he’s been up to, or brings up something Akira told him. Like he’s surprised someone remembered. So Ryuji always makes sure to remember, because Akira never talks about it on his own.

“Gotta make sure you don’t beat me too bad next time we’re at the arcade!” Ryuji says, just to see Akira smile a little more. He does. Damn, it’s a pretty smile.

“_Ogikubo Station_,” the intercom intones. Akira stands fluidly, a man on a mission to get some delicious ramen, and Ryuji follows behind. Akira knows the way so well, you’d think he’d lived in a city his whole life. The total confidence in his step settles Ryuji. No matter where Akira goes, he acts like he knows exactly where he’s going and what he’s going to do when he gets there.

“Dude, you’re goin’ the wrong way,” Ryuji says.

Akira stops. Turns around. Walks in the direction Ryuji’s pointing like he knows exactly where he’s going and what he’s going to do when he gets there.

“Someone’s still usin’ Google Maps to get around Tokyo, huh?” Ryuji snickers, bouncing to catch up with him.

“I know where most places are,” Akira says.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll keep your dirty hicktown secret so you can keep pretendin’ you’re a cool and smooth cityslicker, country boy.”

Akira jabs him in the ribs. Ryuji snickers and makes sure to point out the exact direction of where the ramen place is, like Akira might forget where they’ve gone to get ramen like, a billion times already.

They get their usual table and Akira tells him what he wants, as if Akira’s going to eat anything else but the same thing he always orders, and Ryuji orders for both of them, and only when their food actually ends up in front of them and Akira just stares at it (because Ryuji’s a dumbass who doesn’t notice anything ever) does he realize that Akira’s silence isn’t the same.

“Uh,” says Ryuji. “The ramen bad or something?”

Akira looks down at his noodles. Ryuji stops with his first bite dangling unattractively halfway to his mouth. “Akira?” he says.

“When Futaba lost contact with you…”

Akira pokes at his noodles with his chopsticks, swirling them around in the broth. “We didn’t know what happened,” he says at last. “We didn’t know if we’d lost you.”

Oh holy shit. “No, no, don’t worry about it,” says Ryuji. Shit, he missed this? How long was Akira worryin’ about it and Ryuji didn’t notice? “It’s all good. Nothing happened.”

Akira studies his ramen for a long moment. Then: “I thought I was never going to see you again.”

Ryuji’s stomach does a weird flop, because Akira isn’t an expressive person. He’s the sort of guy you gotta meet halfway, if you wanna know even the first thing he’s thinking, and for all that Ryuji knows Akira’s no silent, wilting flower, it’s not—ah, hell—how’s Ryuji supposed to explain it? It’s not like Akira staring at his ramen with an expression like opaque glass is—fake, or dishonest, or not as real as Joker. It’s just his different way of being Akira when he’s in Tokyo. Like a different persona. Ryuji bets anything Akira would have a different way of being Akira back in his hometown.

But it means that for all the Akiras Ryuji’s seen, not one of them volunteers a statement of his own volition like _I thought I was never going to see you again_.

“Hey, don’t be so serious about it,” says Ryuji. “It’s not like you to be so down.”

Akira doesn’t react, but instead gives off the strong air of someone unimpressed.

“Nothing even happened,” says Ryuji, nudging Akira. “Don’t worry about me! It’d take more than some ugly guy with fancy guns to take me down!”

Eventually, Akira gives him a wry smile. “That’s true, isn’t it?”

“Hell yeah it is! Like I’m gonna let anything stand between me and our heists! Nothing’s gonna stop me from being with you every step of the way.”

“Me too.”

“—Eh?”

“I said,” says Akira, “me too.”

Ryuji’s entire stomach flips upside down.

He laughs nervously. “Oh, dude, you don’t gotta be so serious about it…”

“You’re serious when you say it. And I know that you mean it. And I mean it too.”

Ryuji’s not sure if he wants to jump out of his chair, punch something, or grab Akira’s face and—something. He wants to do _something_, that’s for goddamn sure, but he makes himself sit in his chair and try not to break his chopsticks.

Eventually, Akira looks back at his food. “If that’s okay with you.”

“What? Yes, dude, of course, I mean, I just... “ Ryuji looks down too. “I-It… means a lot. To me. Just got me surprised, is all. Auughh, all this—all this talkin’ is making me hungrier!” he says loudly, like he can yell away this weird feeling in his gut. “We haven’t even eaten anything and the noodles are goin’ cold! Dude, let’s eat!” And he shoves a bunch of noodles in his mouth all at once like he can shove down all his weird squirmy feelings while Akira lets slip one of his quiet laughs, which just makes Ryuji’s face turn red for reasons he’s sure is related to the ramen and not Akira’s smile, and also the urge to jump up and _do_ something doesn’t go away at _all_.

Ryuji’s halfway through his bowl when Akira stops again—_again_, and Ryuji knows what’s gonna come outta his mouth before he even says it: “Are you sure nothing happened?”

Ryuji wishes he could make Akira stop worrying. Akira’s not a loud worrier, but that just bothers Ryuji more, because he knows it’ll keep Akira up at night and Akira won’t ever say anything about it but he’ll get that pinched look in his eyes when he’s stressed, and Ryuji hates just thinking about that. Akira’s got a million and one things on his plate, first and foremost being the lives of all the Phantom Thieves. He doesn’t need to be worryin’ about Ryuji. Ryuji’s supposed to have his _back_, not be stressin’ him out. And maybe it’ll still turn out to be nothing, y’know? Maybe it’ll just be a fluke and it’ll never happen again.

“Yeah,” says Ryuji. “I’m sure.”

*

No one likes that the plan to talk to Mona involves waitin’ around Mementos. Skull especially doesn’t like it, but mostly because everyone keeps _looking _at him. Like he’s gonna break down and panic in the goddamn entrance. It gets under his skin, and on top of that they have to wait around for hours before Mona and Beauty Thief even bother to show up. Skull paces, sits down, gets up, paces some more. Nothing happens, and nothing continues to happen. It’s obnoxious.

(Skull waits, waits, and waits for the burning, but it doesn’t come.)

Fox has his hands up in a picture pose, like he does when he doesn’t have anything better to do. Although now that Skull thinks about it, Fox does that even when he does have something better to do. “Skull, would you mind shifting your position two degrees to the left? Your composition is almost perfect.”

Skull, now leaning against a wall with his hands shoved in his pockets, sighs. “Are they even actually gonna show up?”

“We just have to be patient.” Queen sits, legs crossed, staring up at the ceiling. Skull is just about sure she’s literally counting the tiles.

“I’m so booooored,” Panther says, “can’t we at least wait around in normal clothes? I feel silly standing around like this.” She gestures to her catsuit, which Ryuji thinks looks badass but can’t imagine is super comfy.

“Wait…” Skull stands up from the wall and looks down at his own black leather ensemble. “Can we do that?”

Queen turns her attention away from the ceiling, frowning. “I… suppose? We were in our normal clothes in the metaverse while in Futaba’s palace for a bit, couldn’t we just.” Queen’s frown intensifies. “Hold on. These disguises appear on us when we’re identified as intruders or enemies, right?”

“Uh… I guess?” Panther says.

“So does that mean that despite all the positive press, the people of Tokyo still consider us intruders?”

Skull frowns. “Jeez, talk about two-faced. We aren't even trespassing! It’s just as much our unconscious as it is the rest of theirs!”

A moment of silence.

“Isn’t it?”

Navi abruptly sits up. “Save the lore for later, they’re here.”

“No sign of that strange shadow on the radar?” Joker asks.

Navi shakes her head with a snicker. “What, worried it’s gonna come back and finish the job with Skull?”

“Alright, alright, I’m not made of glass,” Skull says loudly. “I ain’t gonna break and I ain’t afraid of any shitty shadow. It tries to mess with me, I’ll just stomp ‘em right—”

Queen, Panther, and Navi all shush him simultaneously. “_This is a stealth mission_,” Navi hisses, and Skull shuts his jaw again with a _click_, because of course he’d forget that and start yellin’ at the top of his lungs like a big idiot. He doesn’t even need anyone to tell him he’s being an idiot. He already knows, and Skull shuts his idiot mouth and tries not to screw up again.

Thank anything listening, that’s when Mona and Beauty Thief show up.

*

A lot happens in not a lot of time, but long story short they get Morgana back and Haru officially joins the team. It helps that Morgana apologized, and it helps even more that Ryuji knows a thing or two about feelin’ like he’s not pulling his weight on a team. So maybe Ryuji and Morgana will never be best buds, but he figures, hey, he can call it even with him.

As everyone’s getting ready to leave, Futaba suddenly shoots up like she just remembered something. “Oh! Wait! Mona!”

Morgana looks up from licking his paw. “Yes? What is it?”

“You said not to stay on one floor of Mementos too long, right?”

Morgana blinks like he’s confused, and Ryuji can’t help but swing his backpack onto his shoulder with way more aggression than it deserves.

“I did. What about it?”

Futaba leans in close. “We ran into a Secret Boss.”

“You did _what_?!_” _Morgana shrieks, and Ryuji is already out the door. He doesn’t check to see if anyone watches him go. He ain’t stickin’ around for Part Two of this shitty Reaper conversation, and _especially_ not with _Morgana_.

As he walks into the night outside, he almost runs directly into Haru, who’s standin’ right in front of the doorway with her head tilted to one side.

“Oh!” She steps back and looks at the ground. “I apologize. I thought I heard Mona-chan yelling, and I wondered if something was wrong.”

“Nah.” Ryuji looks up at the second floor. He can’t see Akira’s window from this side of the building, but he’s pretty sure Akira left it open. Helps with the musty smell that never totally went away. “Morgana’s just loud. Or maybe you have good hearin’?”

Haru’s smile is small. It’s looks too tiny for her face, like she’s got a bigger smile hiding in there somewhere but this is the one she brings out instead. “That’s very kind of you to say. But, what was he yelling about?”

Ryuji can feel his mouth going sour, and then Haru’s face gets all closed off, and man, Ryuji wishes he was better at controlling literally anything about how he moved, or talked, or existed in general. 

“It’s—” Ryuji wants to say nothing. He doesn’t wanna talk about this more, that’s why he walked out in the first goddamn place, but… Haru’s a Thief now. She deserves better. Ryuji scratches the back of his neck, and scuffs the pavement with his sneakers, and sighs.

“Uh, Futaba’s asking him about some weird shadow we ran into in Mementos. Shouldn’t be a problem now that Morgana’s back and we don’t gotta keep haulin’ around Mementos on foot, but, ya know. Keeping the team all informed ‘n shit.”

Haru nods and worries her bag between her fingers. “That does sound like an important conversation. Perhaps I shouldn’t have left so hastily. When my driver comes to pick me up, I could always ask him to wait… Oh, but my father’s secretary will wonder where I am…”

“Hey, if you gotta head out, then do what you gotta do. I’m sure it’ll come up again in a meeting later. Akira’ll wanna keep everyone on the same page anyway.”

“Are you sure? It sounds important if it’s upset Mona-chan so much.”

“Uh, well…” Ryuji’s stomach drops at the very idea of talking about the weird shadow, but he keeps going: “If you wanna know, I saw the weird shadow too. I can wait with you and fill you in? ‘s no good to be waitin’ around in the middle of the night alone, either.”

Haru squints. Actually, she doesn’t squint, because Haru’s a lady and she’s probably never made an unattractive face in her life. But she squints with her brain. Puts all her focus on Ryuji for a second. It’s a lot like a squint, if you squint.

“Perhaps later,” she says.

Ryuji feels a strange combo of guilty and relieved. He _should _tell her about what happened, ‘specially if she’s worrying about it, but even remembering it fills his guts with dread.

“Uh, yeah.” Ryuji scratches at the back of his neck. “Whatever works for you, you know? You want me to wait around ‘til your ride gets here?”

Haru glances up at the sky, and frowns at the thick curtain of grey hovering over things. “I asked him to pull up a ways away to protect Akira’s location, so actually I had best be going. And I wouldn’t want to compromise your identity, either.” She gives a tiny bow. “Thank you so very much for your offer and your assistance. And as always, thank you for having me on the team. Good night!”

“But I didn’t—”

Haru is already gone, walking down the street with a quick backwards wave, digging around in her bag for something. Probably an umbrella. Ryuji’s left standing under the awning of Leblanc, watching her go.

“...actually help.”

*

> **RYUJI**: hey are we gonna go to mementos today??  
**AKIRA**: Hmm  
**AKIRA**: I have to think about it  
**RYUJI**: yeah man no sweat  
**RYUJI**: i know youre busy and stuff  
**AKIRA**: Nah, I’m not that busy  
**AKIRA**: But if anything I was thinking of going to the palace today  
**RYUJI**: oh  
**RYUJI**: already?  
**AKIRA**: ?  
**RYUJI**: no i’m good let’s go to the palace then  
**AKIRA**: Did you want to go to mementos specifically?  
**RYUJI**: yeah i wanna see piglet-san  
**RYUJI**: no im joking  
**RYUJI**: but for real  
**RYUJI**: noir just joined so i was thinking like  
**RYUJI**: idk she seems kinda shy  
**RYUJI**: maybe we should ease her into it instead of just going right into her  
**RYUJI**: dad’s shitty brain  
**RYUJI**: get her eased into the team and make some friends and do some baton passes and beat up pixies for fun  
**AKIRA**: That’s true  
**RYUJI**: but idk that’s just my two cents  
**RYUJI**: you’re the leader  
**RYUJI**: i’ll follow you wherever you decide  
**AKIRA**: It’s a good point  
**AKIRA**: Let’s go to mementos today  
**RYUJI**: YEEEEEEAAAHHHHHHHHH  
**RYUJI**: LET’S GO LET’S GO  
**RYUJI**: 🔥💪🔥💪🔥💪🔥💪🔥💪🔥💪🔥  
**RYUJI**: 🏋️🏋️🏋️🏋️🏋️🏋️🏋️🏋️  
**AKIRA**: 🃏😎🃏

*

The Phantom Thieves are back in _business_, giant catbus and all, and Skull’s not gonna miss it for the _world_.

The instant he gets in the Monabus, Skull puts his feet up on the chair in front of him until Mona screeches he’ll kick him out and make him walk if he puts his dirty boots on his upholstery, and Skull finds he actually kinda missed that. (Not by a lot, though.) Not to be _too_ grateful to Mona, but hell if Skull hadn’t missed the luxury of ridin’ around in the Monabus seats.

Everyone else is in a good mood too. All the stuff they were keepin’ under the seats is present and accounted for, and Mona’s sheepish apology about not thinking about it all when he ran off does Skull’s mood wonders. The engine purrs while everyone gets settled in, a little tighter than before but nothing too bad. Noir doesn’t... take up that much space.

It’s like Noir’s tryna make herself small, even in a cognitive world where the manifestation of her soul has gatling guns under its skirts. Even with a buncha people who know exactly how much space Noir could take up if she’d let herself. But a couple good fights in and she’s chatting with Panther and actually laughing to some of her terrible jokes. No one senses anything weird, and Mona insists they got time to spare with him driving them around the floors.

Skull bangs his foot along the bottom of the seat in front of him until Panther tells him to knock it off, so he bangs his other foot instead until _Mona_ tells him to knock it off. They’ve fought a couple shadows each, and Skull hasn’t had an attack since that whole thing with the Reaper, so if you ask him, Skull’s bettin’ he got it outta his system. One time thing. Captain Kidd had a fluke and now it’s over, it’s good, kinda like how your computer does weird junk sometimes and then you shut it off and boot it up and then it’s gone like it was never there.

“Skull, can you _sit still_?” Mona complains, when Skull starts trying to roll down the back windows to stick his head out like a dog or some shit. “I mean it when I said I was going to kick you out!”

“You can’t do that!” Skull says loudly. “Joker, tell him he can’t do that!”

“Skull’s wearing steel-tipped boots! It _hurts_!” Mona complains before Joker can say anything. “Make _him_ stop!”

“Well, find us a shadow to beat up and I will!”

Noir turns around with an unreadable expression—but an undeniably closed one, just as Skull realizes he’s been shouting very loudly in a very cramped, very small car. Mona cries, “I’m not driving! Queen is!”

“Skull, I _can_ feel you bouncing around from up here,” Queen adds. “Can you at least _try_ to sit still?”

Like some kinda terrible echo of every teacher he’s ever had: _Mr Sakamoto, if you could _try_ to sit still—if you’re even paying attention—if you could stop distracting your classmates—are you drawing on the desk?_ And then they got all pissy when he was like, yeah I’ll calm down if you let me run around in the playground or somethin’, or even just take a walk down the halls, and then they’d be all, _Mr Sakamoto, if you could take your academics seriously for once_—

—but, Skull thinks (the pace of his leg-bouncing increasing to the sound of Mona’s anger: “What did I _just say_, Skull?!”), effin’ hell if that’s not the story of his life. Try and try and try and try for his whole damn life and he keeps makin’ the same mistakes for no good goddamn reason, can’t even sit in a chair without losin’ his mind, always been that way and always will be that way, even in the freakin’ _Metaverse_ where he’s supposed to, what, be able to _cognitively imagine_ himself into maybe _not_ a screw-up, or however it works (‘cause Skull ain’t even bright enough to know how the hell this Phantom Thievery thing works in the first place). And here he is, doin’ the same shit that he wasn’t supposed to his whole life in class and now it’s happenin’ again and this time it’s for shit he actually cares about, it’s not just him lettin’ down some garbage teacher who never gave a shit about him in the first place; now he’s lettin’ down his _team_, he’s lettin’ down Noir, he’s lettin’ down all the people on the Phan-Site who’re looking up to them, he’s provin’ all those shitty teachers and even his shitty dad right when they said he’d amount to noth—

His breath catches. Slowly, from the bottom up, his lungs begin to burn.

Holy shit. _Here_? On Noir’s _first_ Mementos trip? Shit. Shit, shit, shit—

“Stop the bus,” he says before he can think.

Queen slows down, but doesn’t stop. “Skull?”

“Dude, I said stop!”

_Now_ she stops. “Is something wrong?” she asks in alarm.

“Did you see something weird? There’s nothing on the radar,” says Navi. “Oh, oh, are your Piglet-senses tingling?”

“I—”

The itch in his throat is building. He’s got to get out of here. He can’t freak out here in front of everyone—in front of Noir, after they’d just gotten Mona back—how would that even work, having a breakdown _in_ the Monabus? For the first time, he’s glad that his skull mask actually does what masks are supposed to do: cover his face, because whatever his expression’s doing right now, he’s bettin’ it would just freak everyone out more.

(What the _shit_ is he supposed to do if Kidd shows up?)

“I gotta get out,” he says without thinking again.

“Skull, even if you’re having your differences with Mona, this seems like a bad time to take a walk,” Fox remarks.

“It ain’t about Mona! I—” _think, Skull, be smart for once in your effin’ life_ “—I gotta take a piss.”

There’s a collective groan from the girls. “Oh, _gross_, you don’t have to tell us,” says Panther, as if everyone hadn’t been grillin’ him about why he wanted to get out of the Monabus two seconds ago, but Skull’s too busy shoving his way to the front of the bus to get out to rib her for it.

"You're going to pee in the collective unconscious of the city of Tokyo...?" Queen says doubtfully.

"It sounds like a fascinating performance art piece, though,” says Fox.

“Fox, seriously, what the hell are they teaching you about art at Kosei?” says Navi.

Whatever Fox says in return, Skull’s not there to hear it because he’s yankin’ the Monabus door open and nearly bolting for it. There’s not a shadow in sight in this tunnel and because it’s a subway track and all, the tunnel just keeps going and going in long straight lines with nowhere to hide from Mona and the gang, and whatever this is, he does _not_ want the others to see it. He wants to be _chill _about it, he wants to be normal and not-freaking-out but the next corner is nearly two hundred meters away and he can feel the scratching in his throat, he can feel the tightness shrinking around his windpipe, he can—

—oh, shit, goddammit, it’s like he can feel Kidd’s long knife-like nails growin’ right outta his lungs so Skull _moves_, sprints for the corner like his team depends on it because it _does_, it does, Noir can’t see this on her first day and Joker can’t see this when he’s got a hundred and one other things to worry about and he’d really rather sincerely die than let Mona catch wind of this and turn up his snobby little cat nose at him and say _Wow, Skull, I knew you were incompetent but this is something else_ and Skull could snap back and yell but he’d know that Mona’s right and Skull just barely skids ‘round the corner out of sight and—

—he trips, collapses, hits the dirt so hard he feels the scratches through his thick gloves and oh he really can’t breathe now. Like, one moment air’s goin’ in and out just fine, oxygen going to lungs and the brain and all the muscles and shit, and then the next moment—nothing. Not even a whistle of air in the throat. Closed entirely. He coulda lost his windpipe for all he knew, and his lungs are trapped on the one side and his open, gaping mouth fulla useless air is on the other, and his lungs are slowly but steadily churning through all the air it’s got and it’s not gettin’ any new air, and slowly but steadily they’re beginning to burn.

He opens his mouth to gasp. He can’t. Not even a hiss comes out.

He tries to cry out. He can’t. He needs air to yell.

His hands curl into fists in front of him, as if he could solve this one by punchin’ it, but it’s hard to get angry when your heads goin’ light-headed like a helium balloon. His chest is starting to heave, like it could physically unblock his windpipe with sheer force. The dirt in front of him is dark and growing darker. _This’ll pass_, he tells himself. _It’ll pass and I’ll live and I just gotta tough it out, stop bein’ a baby, do it for the team—_

He feels the fingers around his throat.

Kidd doesn’t lift him this time. Maybe he knows that he got Skull before Skull could even run for it, so Kidd’s decided he wants to take his time about it. He presses him into the dirt almost gently, crushing Skull’s neck into crunchy debris under him, and then keeps pressing; Skull’s legs kick and scrape the floor in a desperate attempt to get traction but he’s pinned by his neck like a bug to a corkboard. Skull’s cheek feels like putty smashed to the ground. _This is fine, this’ll pass, I’ll live, the attack will pass_—his skull mask is diggin’ into his nose, the eyeholes aren’t lining up, he can’t even see anything but the red dim light coming from the misaligned eyeholes and the sweaty dark inside of the metal mask; he can feel his spine in his neck bend and bend and bend and _this’ll pass it’ll pass the attack will go away_ and his Adam’s apple feels like a stuck knife against his own windpipe and Kidd’s grip just gets tighter and tighter and it’s not going away, it’s not passing, Kidd’s not despawning and Kidd’s not even waiting for him to suffocate, Kidd’s just gonna wring him dry, squeeze the life outta him like squeezing toothpaste out of a toothpaste bottle and _I should’ve told Akira_ and _I never would’ve told Akira even if I had to do it over again_ and _I hope Akira isn’t sad because it’s not his fault_—

“AGIDYNE!”

The pain around his neck is replaced by a splitting pain down the middle of his head and he yells—he _yells_, actually, ‘cause he’s got the air to yell again. Kidd’s fingers disappear and Skull feels the soft shatter of his own Persona dematerializing. He hisses. The back of his head feels singed. The _inside_ of his head feels singed. Fire’s not even his weakness but that Agidyne was a son of a bitch, hit like a firetruck and the fire both at once, and honestly he only knows one person who casts fire spells like that—

“_Diarahan!_” Panther cries, which of course does basically nothing. It might fix the bruises on his neck, but he’s not even sure that Kidd leaves any marks like that, and also he’s pretty sure he lost some of the already-precious-few brain cells he had from oxygen deprivation or some shit and no Diarahan’s gonna bring that back. The heal feels nice, at least. Heals that part of his psyche that got its eyebrows singed off with fire, except that part of him was Captain Kidd, so maybe that’s not a good thing anymore.

He can hear Panther running down the Mementos tracks towards him. Skull coughs and pushes himself up on his knees, just for Panther to promptly haul him up the rest of the way by the collar like a scruffy dog and spin him around to face her.

“PEOPLE DON’T PISS IN THE METAVERSE,” she roars at him.

“_WHAT_—”

“HOW STUPID DO YOU THINK I AM—”

“Ow ow _ow_ OW TAKAMAKI—the hell you mean people don’t _piss in the Metaverse_—”

“I’m wearing a full-body leather catsuit, dumbass! I would have _noticed _if people had to pee while we were in our Thief gear!” Ann grabs him by the lapels and shakes him hard. “_Explain_, Ryuji!”

“You—” He coughs. “You don’t gotta be so rough—”

“I said _explain_!” she cries, not really the yelling kinda cry, but more like the actual kinda cry.

Oh, shit. Ann’s almost crying.

“Don’t look at me like that!” she snaps. Ryuji has no idea what expression he’s making, but _she’s_ looking at him like she’s _terrified_. Her fists are so tight around his lapels that he can hear the leather creak. “I’m serious, Ryuji! What the _hell_ was that?!”

His mask is still on the floor. Her mask vanished somewhere. Maybe it’s on the floor with his, or burned away in blue fire, like she’s stripped away her armor until she’s just Ann Takamaki in the Metaverse, holding onto Ryuji Sakamoto like any second he’s gonna make a break for it.

Ryuji knows he can’t blow her off. He has no idea what... _that_ looked like from the outside, but even he’s not dumb enough to think it didn’t look really goddamn bad. “I, uh…” _C’mon, Sakamoto, think, think!_ “Well, it was just, um...”

Ann’s eyes flash and she scrubs at her wet eyes. “If you’re about to try and spin me some _bullshit _about it being nothing or—!”

“No! Goddammit, Ann, I know you’re not stupid!”

“Then why’re you taking ten years to come up with an answer?!”

Ryuji swallows and stalls and tries to look like he’s not stalling, because he needs to come up with something to calm Ann down and somehow convince her not to tell the rest of the thieves...

Wait.

“Well, why’re _you _here alone?” he says hotly, like they’re back in middle school yelling about spare change. “What does everyone else think is goin’ on?”

Ann looks away from his eyeballs for the first time since this conversation started, glaring down at the floor. Red’s bleeding into her cheeks. For a whole second, Ryuji has no idea what’s happening anymore. Then it clicks.

“... Did you tell ‘em you had to piss too?”

“Ugh, I didn’t put it like _that!” _Ann snatches her hands back from Ryuji’s collar and wraps around her middle like she does when she’s self-conscious. “It was just… What if you actually _had _just been going to the bathroom? I’d’ve looked really dumb!”

Ryuji can’t help it. He snorts. He manages to choke back the rest of the laugh, mostly because it catches in his throat weird and he starts coughing again.

“Don’t think you can distract me,” Ann warns, glaring at his throat like it personally offended her.

He knows she’s worried, somewhere in his brain. But right now all that glaring and yelling is doing is pissing him off. “Oh, knock it off with the bad cop routine, Takamaki. What’d it _look_ like?”

“It _looked like _your own Persona flipping out and _trying to kill you._”

Wow, does Ryuji hate hearing those words spoken out loud. _Your own Persona_—yeah, he knows he’s a screw-up, thanks, he doesn’t need Ann to rub it in any more.

“Well, it wasn’t that bad,” he says sourly.

“But that’s what was happening, wasn’t it?!”

“Kidd wasn’t gonna _kill_ me.” The words even come out smooth, like his throat really is just fine and not pulsing with bruising pain. Ann clearly doesn’t buy it for an instant.

“How would you know?!”

“I dunno, Takamaki, maybe I’d know because he’s my _Persona_,” Ryuji snaps. “He’s havin’ a weird time but he ain’t gonna _off_ me. That wouldn’t even make any goddamn sense. He’s me and I’m him and all that. The hell he’d wanna kill me for?”

Ann hesitates. For a whole second, Ryuji thinks he’s got her to lay off, but then her eyes narrow again. “Well, whether or not he was going to kill you or not, he still tried to _hurt_ you!”

Ryuji waves it away with the same nonchalant hand he used to wave when he was walking off a hard fall on the track. “Seriously, Ann, it wasn’t as bad as it looked. He was flippin’ out, but, like, no real harm done.”

“Because I _lit him on fire_.”

“He wasn’t gonna do anything even if you didn’t come in like a big nosy hero buttin’ into shit that’s none of your business.”

“Where do _you_ get off telling me it’s none of my business?!” Ann fires right back. “We’re on the same _team_, dummy!”

“And that’s why it’s none of your business!” Ryuji snaps.

“Do you _hear_ yourself? That’s the exact opposite of a good reason—”

“I don’t need the team worryin’ about it right now!” Ryuji cries. “Okay?! Can you leave it alone already?! Kidd’s been weird but it’s not _bad_, okay, I’ve got it under control and I’m workin’ on it. It’ll just make everybody on the team freak out, and we’re under the gun with Noir’s dad bein’ a dick ‘n everythin’, and we got screwed over when even Mona left and we don’t need to be another man down right now.”

Ann bites her lip. “Ryuji…”

“You know it’d happen and it’d suck ass,” Ryuji warns. “Okumura’s palace is gigantic. I ain’t outta commission yet. I can still fight. I just gotta be a little bit more careful, is all.”

Now Ann’s really chewin’ on her lip like it’s her mission to peel off all her chapstick. “Okay, so, wait a minute—you ran off like you _knew _it was gonna happen. And you’re talking like you’ve had this happen before. When was the first time?”

The first time? The Reaper attack is obvious, but Ann’s the one he asked about the asthma thing. Does she remember that? Would she connect it? Ryuji doesn’t know. But he can’t take too long to respond or else Ann is gonna bring the rest of the thieves down on his head and tell Joker everything.

“During the Reaper attack,” he says quickly, and Ann goes quiet. “It’s basically like I told you but—” _Kidd went berserk without my orders and then once the Reaper was gone he turned on me _“—Kidd drove it off.”

Ann frowns. “What, by himself?”

“Yeah—yeah, by himself! So maybe he was protectin’ me. Maybe it’s kind of a good thing?” Even Ryuji’s own voice don’t sound too convinced. From her face, Ann’s not buyin’ it either, but he keeps going: “Captain Kidd saved my life then. So he’s been kinda weird but I swear, he ain’t gonna kill me, and he ain’t gonna hurt me for real, and if you ask me, we don’t know jack about Personas anyway, so maybe it’s just a normal Persona thing.”

“_Carmen’s_ never done that,” Ann says promptly.

“Okay, _whatever_,” says Ryuji. Damn, when the hell did Ann get this sharp? “I don’t even think this time was a real freak-out anyway. I think it was just ‘cause I was in Mementos and thinkin’ ‘bout the Reaper and all that thinkin’ made Kidd flip out. I’m fine now. It’s over. It probably won’t even happen again.”

Ann breaks eye contact with him, and sighs. “Well. I don’t know. I just…” She trails off. Sighs again, but heavier. “I don’t know. We should tell Joker, at least.”

“No!” Ryuji says sharply.

“Why _not_? We might not know what’s going on with Kidd, but the team should at least _know_!”

“Dude, you know why,” says Ryuji. “Would _you_ wanna tell ‘em if Carmen was flippin’ out? Be all like, ‘Hey Noir, it’s really cool that your entire life’s gonna get sold off to some sex freak and also your dad’s a mega-douche who might be making a fortune off workin’ people to literal death and I know that we’re supposed to save you from Kamoshida Two-Point-Oh and Darth Okumura, but uhhhhhh my Persona’s actin’ a little funky so I think I’m just gonna leave you out to dry’?”

Ann’s eyes are slits. Ah, yeah, maybe it was a low blow to bring up Kamoshida, but the dude’s not friggin’ Voldemort, alright? Besides, Kamoshida got Ryuji’s leg first before he ever went after Shiho and Ann. And Sugi-whatsisface totally _is_ Kamoshida Junior, preyin’ on high school girls who can’t say no.

“I don’t like this,” Ann says.

Well. Yeah. She’s tellin’ _him_ like _she’s _the one who lost a fistfight with the manifestation of her own soul. “Seriously, I’m tellin’ you, it’s practically a one-time thing. It’ll probably never even happen again.”

Ann sighs a third time. Rolls her eyes, more at herself than at him.

Then Ann puts her mask back on in a flash of fire. Panther glares down at him, and she stands as though ready to deliver a proclamation, like a Sailor scout, or maybe one of those cheesy Sailor villains monologin’ about how they’re gonna beat Usagi’s magical 90’s ass once and for all.

“If I see Kidd do anything but_ exactly _what you tell him to, I’ll put him down myself,” she says. “And if I have to put him down myself, I’m telling everyone everything.”

Oh holy _shit_. Ryuji’s nodding frantically before he can remind himself to play it cool. This is better than he could’ve hoped for, and he almost wants to ask why she’s lettin’ him get away with it, but he doesn’t want to push his luck. He gathers up his own mask and sticks it back on. “You got yourself a deal, Panther,” he says.

“And you better believe I’m holding you to it,” Panther says, and tosses her hair carelessly like she wasn’t nearly in tears five minutes ago. “Now let’s get out of here. At this rate, this is going to be the longest bathroom break in history. We don’t want Noir to worry about us, right?”

“Hell no,” says Skull, beaming wide, and follows her back to the Monabus.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **FUTABA**: okay so we all noticed that ann’s being super weird

“Switch out, Mona. Skull, you’re up,” Joker says. Before Skull can even get in there, Panther’s hand shoots into the air like she’s a goody-two-shoes in class trying to earn participation points. Joker stares at her. “...Panther?”

“Switch me in with him!” Panther says. “Let me take over for Queen.”

“Oh… Well, I guess I could use a break…” says Queen, looking uncertainly at Joker.

Joker shrugs. “Switch out, then.”

That puts Joker, Skull, Panther, and Noir on the front lines of Okumura’s Palace’s infiltration team, meaning Panther and Joker will have to split healing duty--but that really means Joker’s on healing, considering Panther can explode things way better than she can un-explode things. “Three tanks in a row--someone’s feeling bold,” Navi snickers. “Are we gonna burn this sci-fi hell to the ground or what?”

As it turns out: no, because three battles later, some freak shadow decides to have fun punting Skull around with wind magic like he’s a beach ball, so he gets swapped out again. Panther’s hand shoots back up in the air. “Permission to switch back out and have Fox take my place!”

So she switches back out to follow Skull to the back-up group, where Skull glares at her in mute silence while Mona tells him he’s not allowed to glare at a fine woman like Lady Ann like that. Thirty minutes after _that_, Noir’s outta gas because it seems like everything in this damn palace is weak to Psi and she’s been blasting Psiodyne like she was born to knock shadows to their knees and cleave their heads from their shoulders in one home-run axe-stroke. Skull’s called back up. Panther’s hand shoots up in the air again.

Queen covers her eyes and shakes her head. This time, Joker just puts his hands in his pockets and tilts his head up, like Panther’s a shadow that’s particularly pissing him off. “Panther, are you good, or…” Navi asks.

“Oh, I’m just, um, suuuuuuper fired up today, ha ha ha ha!” says Panther. “Really ready to kick some shadow butt! Let me switch with Fox again! I think he could use a break!”

“Thank you for your concern, but I can keep going,” says Fox.

“Are you sure? You look a little tired!” says Panther.

“I actually feel quite fine--”

“Plenty of breaks is good for your health!” says Panther, pushing him into the back-up group and taking his place, right next to Skull. She beams at him like she hasn’t been doggin’ him for _four goddamn days_. “Heyyyyyyyy, fancy seeing you here!”

Skull glances back at the rest of the group, then leans in and hisses, “Can you _cool it_? You ain’t bein’ subtle at all!”

“Oh, it’s just Fox, he doesn’t know the difference.”

“What about the _five other people_ here?!”

“I’m looking out for you,” says Panther hotly.

“First off, I didn’t _ask_ for a babysitter. Second off, you’re being weird! Everyone’s gonna think we’re, I dunno, secretly dating or something!”

“Relax,” says Panther, scoffing. “My acting skills are getting better. I bet nobody even noticed a thing!”

*

**FUTABA CREATED PRIVATE CHATROOM “ANN AND RYUJI ARE TOTALLY DATING”**

**FUTABA ADDED AKIRA, MAKOTO, HARU, YUSUKE TO “ANN AND RYUJI ARE TOTALLY DATING”**

> **FUTABA**: okay so we all noticed that ann’s being super weird

*

“I can’t believe you’re dating Lady Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn,” Morgana wails at the top of his little cat-lungs from Ryuji’s bedroom window. 

“What the hell’re you doing here?!” Ryuji yelps, yanking his blanket up over his bare chest and dropping his Switch controller. “What--my apartment’s on the _fourth floor_! It’s _midnight_!” (Then he does a double take because _shit_, where’d the time go? He was supposed to do his homework three hours ago.)

Morgana hops down onto Ryuji’s bed. “It was an emergency!” Morgana screeches. “Code red! All hands on deck! Ryuji first of all how _dare_ you--”

“_Keep your voice down_,” Ryuji hisses, and shuts the window behind Morgana. His ma’s in the next room and this place has walls so thin it might as well not even have walls, and she got home at eleven and has to be out the door at five tomorrow. 

“--impugn upon Lady Ann’s honor without consulting the rest of the thieves, or at least _me_, who deserved to know--”

“Shut up shut up shut up _stop talking_. The hell’re you on about?!”

“You’re dating Lady Ann!” Morgana says like a statement of fact.

Oh god _dammit_. He _told_ her this would happen. 

“I’m not having this conversation without a shirt,” says Ryuji, and puts his Switch controller on the bedside table and gropes around on the floor for a shirt that’ll pass the smell test so he can at least have this conversation in more than his sweats. “First of all, _no_ I’m _not_ dating Ann, and second of all if you could lay off with this whole ‘Lady Ann’ bullshit, because Ann isn’t some kinda fair maiden in distress, I promise--”

“You’re treating her right, aren’t you?!” Morgana insists, kneading his stupid kitty-claws right into Ryuji’s thigh. They go right through the thin fabric of his sweats and Ryuji swears at the top of his lungs because _damn_ this cat is going for _blood_. “You better be giving her gifts and taking her on nice dates and giving her cake and loving her and cherishing her and telling her how wonderful she is every day--”

“_No_, because we’re _not dating_!”

“Lady Ann deserves better than you!” Morgana shrieks. “I knew you’d be a brute! An animal! You’ll make her miserable! You’ll just make her sad and lonely all day long when she could be with someone who does her right--”

Ryuji lunges for Morgana, but the little turdball is effin’ _fast_ and slippery as hell, as cats tend to be. “I’m not an _animal_!” Ryuji yells. “I’m not--I’m not _undatable_, okay, I wouldn’t treat her shitty if we _were_ dating--”

“You’re rude and vulgar and would just break her heart and have no manners at all! You have no consideration for anyone else’s feelings and Lady Ann will just waste away because of you--!”

“_You furry piece of_\--”

“Ryuji?” his mom’s voice calls, followed by a knock on his door.

Morgana freezes long enough for Ryuji to scoop him up and shove him under the blankets. “Uh, yeah, Mom? Sorry, I’ll keep it down!”

“Is everything all right in there?” she says.

“I’m good! Everything’s fine! I was just talkin’ to myself while playing video games! I didn’t mean to wake you up!”

“You still have school tomorrow.” Her voice sounds _so _tired.

“I won’t miss it! I won’t be late, I promise!”

There’s a pause. Even the pause sounds tired. “Alright.”

Ryuji hops up from his bed and opens the door. “Sorry,” he says again. His mom’s not even in her pajamas, actually. He doesn’t know if it’s better or worse that his mom hadn’t been asleep to be woken up. Worse, probably. “You can go to sleep. I won’t make any noise. Promise.”

His mom peers up at him, because at some point he’d popped up like a weed and wound up towering over her by eight inches ever since seventh grade. But she’s still his mom, and he still feels like a guilty kid sometimes when she gives him that look. Mostly ‘cause she never looks at him like she’s accusing him of anything. She’s always just worried and it’s always way worse.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Ma asks. 

“Yeah. Yep. I’m fine.”

His mom doesn’t even look at him suspicious. She even smiles at him a little, which is dumb because he was the one making noise at ass o’clock. “Alright. Be good.”

He’s trying. She drifts off to the kitchen table, where a series of papers is spread out in the dim light, and he peers around the corner of his bedroom door like he’s not sure if he’s supposed to be watching anymore. She gathers them up and dumps them in her bag. Drains her tea and puts it in the sink. “Don’t stay up too late,” she tells him.

“I won’t.”

“Good night, sweetie.”

“Yeah, night.”

And then she disappears back into her bedroom. Ryuji closes his own bedroom door and frowns.

Then Ryuji crosses the room in three big steps and yanks the bed blankets up, where Morgana glares at him. Thank god the little bastard had kept quiet, though. “The hell you mean I’m dating Ann?” he whispers in his quietest, softest voice that can still communicate how much he does _not_ need to be putting up with any shitty cat givin’ him hell for a girl he’s not even dating.

“We all know, Ryuji!” says Morgana tartly. “Futaba told us everything!”

“You know that Futaba isn’t _actually_ omniscient, right?”

Morgana puts his nose in the air like Ryuji is stupid for saying so, which is a bold move from a goblin with limited object permanence. “Well, she made a secret chat, which is another one of your text message windows except you’re not in it--”

“I know what a secret chat is.”

“--and _everyone_ agreed they noticed that Lady Ann is behaving weird lately, and the only logical conclusion from that is that she’s made the terrible decision of dating you. What did you _do_?” Morgana wheedles. “How did _you_ manage to convince her to date you, Ryuji, she deserves so much better--!”

Ryuji is going to develop a headache, he swears; he’s getting flashbacks to all the track team drama where they’d do stupid shit like rank the hotness of the track girls over text and then inevitably get their asses beat when someone took a screenshot and squealed. “Mona, this is high school drama one-oh-one. This is just Classic Humans. We do stupid shit and jump to conclusions. Four people in a group chat, plus a _cat_, is just a bunch of rumors.”

“Five people! Queen, Noir--” _oh geez why would Futaba drag the newest Thief member into this_ “--Fox, Navi, and Joker! And if you ask me,” says Morgana archly, “if Joker thinks so, then it’s got to be true. He’s never wrong about these things!”

Ryuji’s stomach drops. “_Akira_ thinks I’m dating Ann?”

“Because the evidence is obvious! You can’t hide any longer!”

“Naw, dude, it’s Akira, he wouldn’t jump to conclusions like that.”

“Well, deny it all you like, but _he _thinks so, so that’s that! You should have seen his face!” Morgana says, now looking (somehow) even _more_ pissed, and in a sharper, leaner way instead of his hot-air-chivalry act, because Morgana just can’t seem to let anyone mess with Akira even on a good day. “He looked like he had his heart broken! And it’s because of _you_, Skull! How dare you!”

“What?” Ryuji says. “Wh--_Akira_? Why would he… what?”

Morgana shifts uncomfortably. “I… I didn’t think about it. I guess… hrm… maybe… do you think he and Lady Ann…?”

“This is stupid,” says Ryuji abruptly. “This is just a bunch of shit over nothing. I’d have noticed if I was dating Ann, okay, so you can take that to the effin’ bank.” 

“Why would I do that? Am I supposed to rob the bank or…?”

“No, I mean—it’s an expression—go tell Akira I’m _not_ dating Ann. Tell your ‘secret chat’ friends that there’s _nothing_ going on and Ann’s just bein’ weird ‘cause she got low blood sugar or somethin’. Get her a cookie and she’ll snap outta it.”

“Really?!” says Morgana, looking _way_ too hopeful about it. “You think so?!”

“Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Now get your furry butt back to Akira’s place and tell him to get Ann some carbs.” Ryuji hesitates. “Uhhhh, isn’t it kinda late for you to be walkin’ ‘round Tokyo, though…?”

“What’s a carb?”

“Stuff you eat to make you run fast.”

“Oh, like Boss’s coffee!”

“Uh, yeah, sure, coffee is a carb. You wanna crash here so you don’t get mauled by some cat serial-killer in the middle of the night?”

Morgana sniffs. “Like I can’t take care of myself! Like I’d ever stay with _you_, Skull.”

“Hey! I’m tryna be nice here! What’s that supposed to mean?!”

Morgana butts the window back open with his head, which makes Ryuji seriously wonder what that cat’s skull is made of. Steel? Iron plating? Sheer hope like an anime magical girl? “Don’t worry, Lady Ann! I’ll make sure to get you some carbs!” Morgana declares, and he takes an honest-to-god flying leap off the fourth-floor window and disappears like he was never there.

“...Geez,” says Ryuji, and scratches the back of his head. He glances at the rest of his room. It ain’t like it’s dirty, y’know? He never lets the place get dirty ‘cause it stresses his mom out and he hated it when his dad used to leave old pizza boxes and beer bottles all over the place, and how they’d crack under his bare foot sometimes when he got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. His room’s _clean_, okay? Ryuji made goddamn sure of that. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with his place. “Shitty cat,” he mutters, and shuts the window against the cold autumn air.

*

**PRIVATE GROUP CHAT “DEFINITELY NOT THE PHANTOM THIEVES”**

> **RYUJI**: mornin everyone morgana spilled about the secret chat  
**RYUJI**: also btw me and ann aren’t dating  
**RYUJI**: cause that’d be dumb  
**ANN**: What????!!!??  
**ANN**: WHO thinks we’re dating?!?  
**YUSUKE**: I was under than impression.  
**HARU**: I cannot say I wasn’t also assuming… I’m so sorry to pry!  
**MAKOTO**: The evidence added up.  
**FUTABA**: lolololol ripperino  
**ANN**: Okay so sorry to be the bearer of bad news i guess but  
**ANN**: You’re all wrong????????  
**FUTABA**: come on guys just admit it  
**FUTABA**: it’s like painful to watch already  
**FUTABA**: we’re HARDCORE into cats out of the bag part of the slowburn fic  
**FUTABA**: it’s time for y’all to move on from the “secret dating” part to the “dating causes drama and angst in the friend group while the relationship hits trouble in paradise, probably because of stupid and trivial miscommunication”  
**HARU**: Is that how romances are supposed to go…?  
**FUTABA**: well they could do the cute fluffy route with sickfics and junk but somehow i don’t think ryuji is the kind to feed ann soup or whatever it is people do in fluffy sickfics  
**ANN**: Okay well now i feel a little better about you thinking we’re dating because i’m pretty sure you have no idea what you’re talking about  
**FUTABA**: false i have the power of god and fanfiction on my side  
**FUTABA**: also everyone in our group agrees that you’re being sooooooooooooooooo obvious   
**ANN**: What’s so obvious about it???  
**RYUJI**: yeah!! me and her have got nothing in common!  
**FUTABA**: methinks the ladies doth protest too much  
**YUSUKE**: You certainly seem to be operating on the same wavelength now, in your copious denials.  
**YUSUKE**: Your compatibility is excellent.  
**FUTABA**: i made inari put ur names in a romance-o-meter online and  
**HARU**: It was an 83% match!  
**MAKOTO**: Not to mention how closely you’ve been sticking together in the Metaverse…   
**RYUJI**: come on class prez not you too  
**FUTABA**: and also how close ur sticking together outside of the metaverse  
**FUTUABA**: Ryuji<3Ann  
**FUTABA**: Ryuann  
**FUTABA**: the ship of the future  
**RYUJI**: this is so dumb  
**ANN**: We can’t be dating  
**ANN**: Seriously guys we’d kill each other  
**YUSUKE**: Truly, a most passionate relationship… I wish you the best in your courtship, for it sure to be full of the same ferocious highs and lows as your firey spirits.  
**ANN**: Yusuke I can make fire with my BRAIN i mean i WILL kill ryuji literally and not in a cute tsundere way  
**RYUJI**: what she said  
**MAKOTO**: I’m not sure why you’re even trying to keep it a secret?  
**MAKOTO**: You’re clearly compatible.   
**MAKOTO**: And… not to put too fine a point on it, but I don’t think anyone at school would really care if you were dating.  
**FUTABA**: she means ur too unpopular for anyone to give a shit about what u do lmaooooo  
**MAKOTO**: No!  
**MAKOTO**: ...Maybe.  
**MAKOTO**: There’s no reason to hide or deny your relationship, is my point.  
**RYUJI**: we’re denying it because we’re NOT DATING  
**ANN**: Yes!!!  
**ANN**: Also I have *way* higher standards than settling for Ryuji  
**RYUJI**: :(  
**FUTABA**: alright so then explain y u’ve both been acting so weird in the metaverse  
**FUTABA**: running off in mementos, stickin so close in the palace………  
**HARU**: Um...  
**HARU**: Actually, if they’d rather have their privacy…  
**HARU**: I’m sure what they’ve been up to is their own business!  
**FUTABA**: see even the new hire thinks ur dating  
**FUTABA**: get better at hiding scrubs  
**FUTABA**: and u call yourselves phantom thieves  
**RYUJI**: hey! if we WERE dating none of you would even suspect a thing!!  
**ANN**: We’re the PEAK of subtlety  
**RYUJI**: we’d have that shit on LOCK  
**ANN**: We wouldn’t even be NEAR each other  
**RYUJI**: the fact you all even suspect us just proves even more that we aren’t dating  
**RYUJI**: boom  
**ANN**: Slam DUNKED  
**ANN**: 👏   
**RYUJI**: 👏  
**MAKOTO**: ...Wow.  
**FUTABA**: LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOO  
**RYUJI**: what  
**HARU**: That was very cute, actually!  
**YUSUKE**: Is this what they call… “chemistry”?  
**ANN**: WHAT???  
**AKIRA**: Morgana says that you both need to “just get engaged already and make an honest woman out of Lady Ann”  
**AKIRA**: “Make sure he treats her right”  
**ANN**: honest woman???? Im already honest!!  
**ANN**: I barely even lie!!  
**ANN**: Except about being a phantom thief  
**ANN**: Obviously  
**ANN**: And about my bust size when I’m modeling but everyone does that  
**ANN**: Wait should I have mentioned thievery in the group chat  
**FUTABA**: oh i took this off the main server weeks ago  
**FUTABA**: super encrypted also ur welcome  
**ANN**: Thank you futaba!!!!  
**ANN**: ANYWAY we’re not getting engaged!!!  
**ANN**: Bap mona on the head for me akira!!!  
**RYUJI**: tell him to stop being an idiot while ur at it  
**RYUJI**: i think he actually listens to u right??  
**RYUJI**: and it’s not like you believe this crap  
**RYUJI**: akira????  
**AKIRA**: Have to get to class, ttyl

*

And that’s the last text Akira sends in the group text for hours. First period goes by: Futaba starts pestering Akira to pester Yusuke to answer his phone because she needs some code on the _back _of his phone so she can encrypt it for security. Eventually Futaba makes Makoto do it. Second period: Ann shares one of those listicles about weird high heels that look like they could kill a man. Haru does that thing where she whips out ten different kaomojis in zero-point-five seconds and soon Ann and Haru are blowing up everyone’s phones with texts about high heels, which Akira’s always a sucker for, and there’s no response at all. Third period: Ushimaru snatches Ryuji’s phone right out of his hand, claps him on the back of the head with the chalkboard eraser so that Ryuji’s covered in chalk dust, and then Ryuji doesn’t get his phone back until lunch.

Which sucks. It’s probably supposed to be good because that way Ryuji can actually pay attention to shit that’s happening in class and he can do the Learning Thing and maybe even the Taking Notes thing, but mostly it just sucks. Because Ryuji doesn’t like school. 

What a shocker, right? The dumb kid doesn’t like school. Stop the goddamn presses. But more than that, he doesn’t like Shujin, specifically. He could list all the obvious reasons. Ain’t no shortage of obvious reasons, starting with Kamoshida and ending with Pulled Scholarship. But he’s not gonna quit. He’s gonna graduate from Shujin Academy and flip everyone off on the way out. (Probably not. His mom would be there.)

But on that list of not obvious reasons would be how no one in his class talks to him anymore. Students run off to get bread from the school store, or set up in packs around desks, eating from cute bentos. Ryuji’s already eaten his, devoured it more like. The plastic container is old and the food was good. Leftovers, but like, primo leftovers. Nothing like the works of art he sees some of the girls in his class pulling out to oos and aahs from their friends. The guys sit on desks munching on riceballs, shooting the shit about school drama, or maybe sports. Ryuji wouldn’t know, cause none of them talk to him. It wasn’t like he talked to them much to begin with; most of his bros were on the track team, scattered around the school. But before all that went down, he could have joined in with the lunchtime conversation. Not so much now. He’s got a reputation. 

So Ryuji’s got nothing to do but stare at his phone. The Phansite’s not doing much interesting, probably cause most of the users are in school themselves. A couple comments about annoying siblings or bad customer service. Noting worth a damn. 

The group chat’s dead too, cause everyone’s busy talking, eating, or doing whatever Akira does when he gets a minute alone. Reading? He seems like he’d read. But without that distraction, it means Ryuji’s got nothing to do but think about weird stuff. 

Like how everyone’s been acting like him and Ann are a thing now?

It shouldn’t be that big a deal, right? Mostly they’re just teasing. Ryuji bets if him and Ann actually did start dating, they’d be all nice about it. But that would mean actually dating Ann and… no. Not doing that.

But here, in the empty lunch period when no one’s on the messenger, Ryuji’s brain tosses around a bunch of random shit he doesn’t like thinking about, and apparently today that random shit is about Ann and Dating. 

_What’d be wrong with dating Ann? _His brain says, like it already knows the stupid answer but wants to make him say it anyway. 

What would be wrong with dating Ann is that they’re _friends, _alright? Been friends for years. If any dating was gonna happen it woulda happened when they were younger and stupider. Now it’d just be awkward. 

_But she’s a pretty girl. You’re a guy. Why don’t you wanna date her?_

Of course Ann’s pretty, but that doesn’t mean he wants to _date _her. Besides, Ann’s out of his league, and she has no interest in dating anyway. 

Neither of them do, actually. While the rest of the student body went nuts over dating and gossiping about dating, Ryuji and Ann stuck together and talked about anime or whatever. Then when round two, Now With Sex hit, Ann and Ryuji still hung out. Ryuji sometimes wonders why. S’not like they have much in common aside from being blonde. 

_Maybe Akira has a thing for blondes._

Ryuji abruptly stands up, chair screeching against the floor, and walks out of the classroom. Teacher isn’t gonna show up for ten minutes, he could do a lap through the hallways before then. Better than sitting still and thinking about dumb shit Morgana said. 

The halls are already clearing out, students wandering back to their classrooms in time for the next round of lectures. No one pays him any attention, too busy chatting with friends or scrollin’ on their phones. Walkin’ around like this, it feels like he could be the one watching for a change. 

“Sakamoto!” 

Ryuji’s got half a mind to just keep goddamn going, no way a teacher opening like that has anything good to say to him. He’s heard it all before. ‘Stand up straight’ or ‘wear your pants right’ or ‘do something about that ridiculous hair’. 

Wait, he’s pretty sure all of those were from Ushimaru. Whatever. The point is, when Ryuji stops and turns around to face the teacher who’d called him out, he’s ready for some kind of lecture. 

“Sakamoto, it’s a little close to class to be _wandering _the halls,” Hiruta says. He’s got that smug eff look on his face, but Ryuji’s pretty sure Hiruta accidentally stapled that on one day and couldn’t figure out how to get it off. It feels way more like a mask that Kamoshida’s smug eff face. Ryuji can’t even get mad about that anymore, cause Hiruta gives him a whole buncha other reasons to be pissed off. So sure he’s one of the smartest guys in the room. 

“I know what time it is.” Ryuji knows he’s being sulky, but whatever. He doesn’t care. 

“Just… checking,” Hiruta smiles, and wow Ryuji takes it all back he goddamn _hates _that face. “Wouldn’t want you to wander off campus, would we?”

“I wasn’t gonna skip class.”

“Oh?”

Hiruta looks like a real sack of shit, standing there like he knows he caught Ryuji in a lie. But he _didn’t, _Ryuji actually was gonna take a lap around the first floor and sit back down at his desk in time for Biology. Hiruta doesn’t care. If Ryuji actually shows up now, he’ll think it was because he was _so smart, _catchin the delinquent kid being a delinquent and settin him on the straight and narrow.

“I _wasn’t _gonna_.” _Ryuji says. 

Hiruta doesn’t pick up what he’s putting down. “Then I shall see you momentarily.” He turns around like the pompous shitheel he is, and doesn’t even check to see if Ryuji’s actually following him. 

Ryuji turns right around walks down the stairs instead. 

Ryuji knows how this is gonna go, too. Hiruta is gonna think he was right all along. Shake his head, maybe even click his tongue like the overdramatic douchebag he is. Complain about Problem Students and Delinquents, how Ryuji Sakamoto checks off every goddamn box on the shitlist. Screw him. Screw Biology. Ryuji doesn’t give a damn.

No one’s using the track. Maybe PE is inside, or no one has it right now, either way doesn’t matter because Ryuji ditches everything on the side of the track and runs until there’s nothing in his brain but air. The stabbing pain in his leg barely even registers. It’s cold as effin’ _hell_, but guess who gives a shit? Not Ryuji, Delinquent Dickhead extraordinaire. Ryuji doesn’t care about anything, _apparently_.

Eventually Ryuji collapses on the autumn grass by the track. It’s dry and crinkly and also it hurts against his skin. Grass sucks. Especially almost-winter grass. Wow, he shoulda brought his jacket or something; he’s all sweaty and hot _now_, but the instant he cools down, he’s gonna be feeling it.

For now he closes his eyes.

Ugh, and he skipped _Biology_, too. He sucks ass in Bio. There was that whole presentation they were supposed to be workin’ on. And the test next month--or was it next week? Closing his eyes isn’t working. Maybe he should take another run.

By the time the bell rings for next period, he’s all stiff and cold ‘cause he didn’t warm down right, and he groans. Either he’s gonna slink back into class and nobody’ll noticed he’d ever been gone, or some Makoto Wannabe is gonna sell him out to the teacher as soon as he shows his face. Now he kinda wants to skip _next_ period, too; but he knows that next period PE is gonna be using the track, and he’ll get caught if he stays here, and if he doesn’t have the track, he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. 

He goes back to class. Rather than getting immediately chewed out, nobody notices he was ever missing at all. Ryuji figures it’s better that way, but it doesn’t feel like it.

*

“Ryuji,” says Mom, in her Mom voice. “Can I… talk to you for a second?”

His heart drops into his shoes. Ryuji can almost feel it land, with a messy splat right on the cheap fake wood. He’s been trying to force this biology homework to make sense for he doesn’t even know how long. Too long, duh, because he was supposed to take the chicken out of the fridge before Mom got home and he completely effing forgot. Now Mom’s home, he hasn’t done anything for hours, and the chicken is still a block of ice in the freezer. What a waste of space. 

“Yeah, sure!” Ryuji calls back, standing up from his desk. His leg’s asleep, but actually being fulla radio static is slightly better than the aching he’d been feeling since this afternoon. Weird to walk on, but better. 

Mom’s sitting at the table, between their tiny half kitchen and the rest of the apartment that isn’t their bedrooms. She looks exhausted. So like normal, but extra. Ryuji tries not to feel like the worst son on the planet and approaches. 

“What’s up?” he says, and cringes. Like this is some kinda casual conversation. Maybe she got a call about him skipping class after all. Just cause he didn’t get yelled at doesn’t mean Hiruta didn’t notice. How would he even explain? ‘A teacher was mean so I left’? The hell kind of brat does that?

Mom looks up and smiles at him. Maybe she didn’t get a call about him skipping class, then. Ryuji sits down at her right, close but not on the same side of the table, before she strains her neck looking up. 

“Sorry about the chicken, I just--”

“It’s alright,” Mom says. Ryuji doesn’t think it’s alright. There isn’t anything else that can be fixed up quick for dinner. Everything else in the fridge would take a lot of time. Knowing Mom, she’s gonna go to bed hungry and not say anything about it. 

“I wanted to…” She trails off. Ryuji has no clue what this is about, but it feels important. Mom rubs her thumbs together absently while she puts the words in order in her brain. 

“I wanted to talk to you about… recently.” Mom inhales, then exhales. “I noticed that lately… you’re staying out later at night,” she says slowly. She’s looking down. “And I’ve noticed that…” She hesitates again. “I’m not trying to accuse you of anything…”

What? Accuse him of what? Is he missing something? Ryuji stares like the dumbass he is, not getting what his own Mom is trying to say to him. 

“I wouldn’t think it’s _strange_ that you don’t want me to overhear your phone calls, but sometimes I do hear you speaking with your… friends… about strange things…” 

It takes literally every single fiber of Ryuji’s goddamn nonexistent self-control to not immediately ask ‘what kind of strange things?’. Shit, shit, _shit_, did she overhear him yelling at Morgana? Or _worse_, talking about being a Phantom Thief? Ryuji’s pretty sure he hasn’t actually said the words ‘Phantom Thieves’ in the apartment, but he’s not _totally _sure, screw him and his big thoughtless mouth--

Mom’s going on without him, apparently on a roll. “And with all those rumors about that Kaneshiro man in Shibuya, and I know that you and your friends have been hanging around there lately…”

That’s… wait. That’s not right. If she overheard something about the Thieves, why would she bring up Kaneshiro? Isn’t he old news by now? Why not Mejed? Gears grind to a halt in Ryuji’s brain, then they slowly start turnin’ in the opposite direction while his Mom sits there, not looking at him. 

Kaneshiro’s been in and out of the news, cause all his shit fell apart in pieces. Police breaking up strongholds and tracking down other high ranking members trying to get out of the country. Whenever that happens, the news loves to pull out the gross details of the crimes that Kaneshiro confessed to. Especially how teens from Shujin Academy were dragged down with promises of easy money and then spat out as husks in endless debt. 

“Are you saying I joined a gang?” Ryuji blurts out.

“No, honey, I--” She makes a face. She’s getting wrinkles between her eyes with all the frowning she does over him. “Well...” 

_Checking all the boxes on the shitlist--_

“I wouldn’t!” he says, because that’s the _truth, _Ryuji would _never_ join up with scumbag gangsters like Kaneshiro, not for anything, ever. 

“I’m not saying that you would,” she says hastily, and Ryuji shuts his mouth real fast because that’s the _exact_ same voice she used when she was trying to get Dad to not blow up at her, and more lately, to get her boss to not blow up at her. Ryuji can feel his entire stomach curdling in his gut. All his anger goes out in a puff. “I’m just… worried, okay? And I hope that you’d tell me anything, but…”

There’s an uncomfortable silence, as Mom obviously searches for some way to be a good mother, and Ryuji searches for some way to be a good son. 

Okay, well, _not_ losin’ his cool at his mom is a good place to start: “Yeah, Mom, I would, I’d tell you anything, I swear.”

Mom looks up at him. “Even if you fell in with a bad crowd?” 

_Even if I joined the Phantom Thieves of Hearts?_ Uhhhhhh. “Yeah,” Ryuji says, and mentally kicks himself in the shin. “I’d tell you straight away if I got into any trouble. For real. You don’t gotta worry about me.”

She smiles wanly. “I trust you.” She reaches out, and puts a hand over Ryuji’s. He hopes they aren’t as sweaty as they feel. “And I’m not saying that you have. But if you got into _any_ sort of trouble--if you wound up with bad friends, or if you wound up with drugs of any kind, or anything like that--”

“Mom--”

“--I mean it, Ryuji. I won’t be mad. I won’t be upset. You won’t have let me down. I just want to know so that I can help. Okay?”

“Moooooooooom.”

“Ryuji?” she says.

Ryuji covers his face. “Yeah, Mom. I will. I would.”

The lie tastes like shit in his mouth. 

  
*

> **ANN**: Hey what’s up with akira??  
**RYUJI**: uh idk  
**RYUJI**: i think he’s working at leblanc tonight actually so i really have no idea  
**ANN**: No I don’t mean like what he’s DOING  
**ANN**: He seems kinda down  
**RYUJI**: whyre you askin me??  
**ANN**: Come on  
**ANN**: I know he’s not super talkative in the chat to begin with  
**ANN**: But all day? with nothing??

Ryuji grimaces at his phone. He’d been avoiding the chat all day, as soon as school got out. Now it’s dark, he’s sitting at his desk, bio textbook open and unread in front of him. Akira had been kinda weird ghosting them at the end of that group convo, but this is the first thing he’s hearing about Akira going silent.

> **RYUJI**: ok that doesnt sound right  
**ANN**: Yeah it’s weird  
**ANN**: Could u talk to him  
**ANN**: I messaged him but u know how he is  
**RYUJI**: uh  
**RYUJI**: no??  
**RYUJI**: He’s not that hard to talk to  
**ANN:** r u serious  
**RYUJI**: He talks to me all the time  
**ANN**: And that’s exactly why im texting you  
**RYUJI**: ??

Ann doesn’t respond right away, but Ryuji is used to that. She’ll put down her phone at any point in a text conversation, to go do a photoshoot, handle dinner, take out the trash, just any random whatever. Ryuji’s gotten used to it after years of dealing with her over the phone.

> **RYUJI**: yo akira  
**RYUJI**: did you die

Back to Ann:

> **RYUJI**: ok ok i’ll ask  
**ANN**: TYYYY 💖💖💖💖  
**RYUJI**: bro this is why everyone thinks we’re dating  
**ANN**: What, you’re too good for platonic hearts???  
**RYUJI**: i mean obviously not also why you gotta send so many  
**ANN**: 💚💖💘💚💕💛💗💖💕💙💖💛💚💛💛💕💜💜💖💚💕🧡💜💖💜💚💖💙💝💖💖💜🧡💜💘💖🧡💕💚💖💜💝💚💙💖💕💗💟💝💖🧡💚💖💙💝💖💗🧡💞💖💚💟💛💕🧡💜💞💖💝🧡💛💖💜💘💞🧡💞💖💟💚💖💕💞💙💖💚💖💚💝💖💟💕💖💞💗💛💜💘💛💙💖💖💟💙💞💗💖💚💖💗💝💚💘🧡💖💘💛💜💖💝💕💘🧡💘💜💛💟💕💞💖💕  
**RYUJI**: WTF HOW DID YOU DO THAT SO FAST

He hasn’t even finished the text before Akira responds:

> **AKIRA**: I’m too sexy to die  
**RYUJI**: you wish lmao  
**AKIRA**: I’m telling the truth  
**AKIRA**: I, leader of the phantom thieves, have never told a lie in my life  
**RYUJI**: yeah dude idk how to tell you this but you still gotta learn how to dodge in the metaverse  
**RYUJI**: you can’t just power your immortality with ur sheer sexiness  
**RYUJI**: dude are u good?  
**RYUJI**: u weren’t in the chat all day today

Akira doesn’t respond to that right away. Back to Ann:

> **RYUJI**: did something happen with akira today?  
**ANN**: ??  
**ANN**: Not that I know of  
**ANN**: Besides everyone being IDIOTS about us dating  
**RYUJI**: ugh yeah tell me about it

Just when Ryuji thinks he’s gotta pester Akira, Akira texts back:

> **AKIRA**: I was just busy today.

Oh, big shit, huh. He put a period there and everything.

> **RYUJI**: u wanna talk about it  
**AKIRA**: I’m still working

Ryuji sighs.

> **AKIRA**: But you can come by around 8  
**AKIRA**: I’m closing today because Sojiro has a thing  
**RYUJI**: oh NICE free real estate  
**RYUJI**: dance party at leblanc all night long  
**AKIRA**: With blackjack  
**AKIRA**: And maids  
**RYUJI**: don’t you already keep leblanc really clean  
**AKIRA**: Okay just blackjack  
**RYUJI**: and the orange cream soda that sojiro gets from that fancy place??  
**AKIRA**: Blackjack and the fancy orange soda  
**RYUJI**: NIC

Back to Ann:

> **RYUJI**: k i’m gonna talk to him  
**ANN**: Oh good!!!!!!  
**ANN**: Thank u ryuji!!!!!!!  
**RYUJI**: yeah np

Ryuji sits up and checks the bedside clock. It’s an hour off for some reason, but he always remembers its an hour off anyway, so it’s basically right. The clock says it’s seven, which means it’s six. If he wants to get the train and get to LeBlanc without having to sprint, he should be walking out the door basically now. 

He’s tossing on his hoodie and checking for his wallet and phone when he catches his mom’s eye. She’s standing in the kitchen, a steaming cup of tea in her hand. The stuff that’s supposed to help her sleep better, if Ryuji has the smell right. 

_Hey, I know we just had a whole talk about me not being in a gang, but I’m gonna go talk to Akira, who is the leader of my Not-Gang, about something that actually isn’t related to Not-Gang stuff! So it’s all good, nothin’ to worry about here!_

Ryuji doesn’t say any of that, cause he’s stupid, not an idiot. 

“I’m goin out to study,” he says, looking at his mom’s nose. “I’ll be back before it’s too late.”

“Are you meeting with someone?” she says, stirring the tea absently. 

“Yeah, friend of mine. Kurursu. I think I mentioned him?”

Mom nods. “Ah, right. The one who got top exam marks. Stay safe out there.”

“I will, love ya!”

Just as he’s walking out the door, he hears her say “Love you too,” in a low, concerned voice.

*

Ryuji rolls into Leblanc around 7:30, manga in hand. He’s early, but chilling in Leblanc with a manga while Akira closes up shop is primo reading time. Something about the place lets Ryuji focus in on stuff. It’s not empty, Leblanc rarely is, but the only people there aside from Akira and Ryuji are an older couple Ryuji’s seen in and out of the place. The old-timers are standing up and putting money on the counter, saying nice things about the service and complimenting Akira on his coffee making skills. Akira’s got on his customer service face. It’s a little stiff around the edges, but seems way more natural than the weirdly bright grins the convenience store clerks got on. Less neon, more lamplight. 

Ryuji holds the door open for the couple, and gets a “What a polite young man!” from the lady for his trouble. The older man doesn’t even acknowledge him. (Dick. It’s always the old men who’re assholes.)

Once they leave, it’s just him and Akira. Akira has his apron on and his sleeves rolled up, and he’s wiping down the table, back and forth like how the guys at the track would do their cool downs. Practiced, that’s the word. You’d think Akira had been workin’ at this exact coffee shop all his life. “Yo.” Ryuji waves. “Got my booth reserved?”

Akira’s customer service smile shifts into something more honest. (Ryuji knows because he smiles more with his eyes than his mouth.) He points, and there in the center booth is a glass of orange cream soda, waiting for Ryuji. It’s on a _doily_, like a calling card left by a thief to impress his audience with his flair and formality.

“Oh my god, you’re such a show off.”

Akira bows, not the regular kind of bow but the kind with the flamboyant little hand folded across his stomach. “Nothing but the best for a valued Leblanc regular.”

“Dude, you’re gonna get caught if you keep actin’ like a Phantom Thief in broad daylight!”

Akira gives a mock look of surprise at himself. “What makes you say that? I’m not dressed as a thief. Could I have stolen your heart?”

“You wish!” Ryuji snorts. Akira tilts his head, so that his eyes hide behind the frames of his glasses. “Don’t you know that I’m--” Ryuji finger-quotes aggressively “--’dating Ann’ now?”

Akira opens his mouth to say something, but then the bell above the door rings and Akira focuses on an actual paying customer. Some guy in a suit. Looks like money and not a face Ryuji’s seen before; Akira’s gotta hustle if he wants to win Sojiro a new regular, so Ryuji slouches over into his booth and tries to pretend he’s not loitering like a teenaged hooligan and semi-stealing Sojiro’s soda.

The manga he brought passes the time alright. It’s a Featherman spin off, focusing on the side characters that don’t get a lot of screen time in the TV show or the main run. Not bad, but there’s a lot of people standing around and talking. Ryuji idly wonders if their feet ever start hurting, standing up all day, making speeches about the burden of heroism or whatever. The soda’s perfectly chilled, the exact right amount of ice, though, so Ryuji starts fiddling with his straw and the glass and later skipping to the parts without text. At some point, he practically chews right through his straw. He shreds the straw wrapper to pieces practically small enough to be microscopic before he realizes that Akira’s gonna have to be the one to clean it up, so Ryuji guiltily steals a wet paper towel from the bathroom and wipes the booth table down himself.

He gets pulled out of a rare action bit by the sound of cups clinking in running water. Looking up, Akira isn’t manning the front, and the Open sign at the front has been flipped to closed. Ryuji’s soda disappeared sometime while he wasn’t looking. He pulls out his phone to check the time and sees a few more messages from Ann.

> **ANN:** What’s the deets  
**RYUJI**: give a man some time to work  
**ANN**: How long can a text convo take  
**RYUJI**: no i went to leblanc  
**ANN**: Oh my god really  
**ANN**: Ok well that makes sense  
**ANN**: He’s kind of really bad at texting isnt he  
**RYUJI**: not everyone can summon twenty million heart emojis in five seconds  
**ANN**: 💋💅  
**ANN**: Even moreso you need someone to watch ur back then!!!!!  
**ANN**: Getting akira to talk about his thoughts and feelings is dangerous work lolol  
**ANN**: Im checking in for your safety  
**RYUJI**: lol yeah sure mom  
**ANN**: Don’t you love your mom  
**RYUJI**: oh hmmmm  
**RYUJI**: what’s a real pain in the ass notification that never shuts up  
**ANN**: Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh when you buy a sample box of variety make-up and then they keep sending you promotional stuff for like 10 yrs afterwards  
**RYUJI**: somehow that doesnt have the same punch as “lol yeah sure mom”  
**ANN**: ALSO I’m not being annoying!!!  
**ANN**: I’m looking out for you!!!!!!!!!  
**RYUJI**: geez ok alright

Ann’s typing a message bubble pops up, and then disappears. Pops up again, disappears again. Ryuji’s starting to think she’s given up when she sends

> **ANN**: Im not going to stop watching your back  
**ANN**: No matter what anyone says

Leblanc settles around him, warm and creaking. The sound of running water cuts off in the back, and the ice in Ryuji’s glass shifts slightly as it melts. Sometimes, no matter what the old folks say, shit really does get through text--or maybe he just knows her too well. Once, she made a guy cry in middle school because he snapped her bra strap and she told the whole class, in front of his teachers and his parents at open house, what he’d done. Ryuji still remembers the look in her eye when she sees Kamoshida’s face on news broadcasts. Ann’s the kinda person who was always waiting to rip her mask off and bleed from her eyes and pull a man-eating Persona from the depths of her soul. Took to it like a fish to water, to be honest. It makes Ryuji almost jealous. Sometimes, Ann just says things, and you know she’s made up her mind, and she’s going to get what she wants, and whether or not it’s a promise or a threat is up to you.

> **RYUJI**: i figured  
**ANN**: Good

“Last call for coffee before I wash the pots,” Akira calls. 

Ryuji puts his phone to sleep, and realizes immediately he never actually checked the time. Dammit. His leg bounces under the table. “I keep telling you, it’s not gonna happen. Coffee’s too bitter, it’s a conspiracy by adults.” (Geez, the hell is Ann’s problem? Well, what the hell is _Kidd’s_ problem--no, stop thinking about it.) “Smell’s alright though. Maybe people just like that and put up with the taste?”

Akira slides into the booth with his own cup of coffee and Ryuji gets a strong whiff of coffee. Akira, especially after a Leblanc shift, smells exactly like ground up coffee beans. He folds his green apron in his lap into neat squares and, when he’s done, rolls his neck. “Can’t relate,” he says, and takes a long sip of coffee without even blowing on it to cool it. 

Then he has to put it down because the coffee’s fogging up his glasses and he can’t see shit. Ryuji laughs at him until he takes his glasses off and wipes it on his shirt. “Why do you even wear those things? You don’t even need them.” Akira doesn’t respond. “Hey, if they’re fashion lenses, I can wear ‘em, right? I wanna try!”

So Akira slides the glasses over like a bartender sliding a drink across a table, because he can’t do anything without being extra. Ryuji puts it on and strikes one of Akira’s corny Metaverse poses. “How do I look?”

Akira’s doing that thing where he smiles with only his eyes again. “Incredible.”

“No, I’m pretty sure I look like a nerd, because these are nerd glasses.”

“Pretty sure they make everyone who wears them look incredible and also very charming and knowledgeable and proficient.”

“Your big words aren’t gonna distract me from your nerdy glasses, Akira.”

“I heard from the leader of the Phantom Thieves himself that those glasses make you very handsome and cool.”

“Dude, your sense of humor is _awful_.” Ryuji takes the glasses off and hands them back. 

The instant Akira’s glasses are back on his face, Akira says, “I’m fine, Ryuji. I’m not dying. But thanks for coming out here.”

“Are you sure? You’re not like, stressed with school and the palace and the Thieves being famous and stuff?”

“It’s all the same,” says Akira noncommittally, and then pauses. “Well. Morgana keeps asking me for carbohydrates, for some reason. Which is kind of odd, I guess.”

Ryuji starts snickering until he remembers:

_Joker looked like he had his heart broken!_ Morgana had said. _I guess… hrm… maybe… do you think he and Lady Ann…?_

_Maybe Akira really does just have a crush on Ann_.

“I just wasn’t in the group chat today because it was…” Akira searches for the right word in his bean juice. “Awkward.”

Oh holy shit. “This _is_ because you think I’m dating Ann!” Ryuji blurts out at the top of his lungs.

“I maintain that Morgana asking for bread around the clock has been _really_ weird.” Akira hesitates. “But, well…” 

Ryuji stands up and slams his hand on the table, like something out of a lawyer crime drama. “We aren’t dating!” he says, with total conviction and sincerity. 

Akira appears unmoved. “Right. If you say so.”

“No, dude.” Ryuji grabs Akira’s face and turns it up towards him. “Look at me. Look me in the eyeballs.”

Akira does look, and his eyes narrow. “...Did you pluck your eyebro--”

“Those aren’t my eyeballs! Look at my _eyeballs.”_

“Looking.”

“Me. And Ann. Are _not. Dating.” _

Akira takes a moment to process. The moment he does, Ryuji can _see_ it: Like the puzzles pieces slotting together, of course, but also like a relief off his mind. “...Ah.”

“Yeah.”

“I see.”

“Yeah!”

“Futaba’s argument was very convincing.”

Ryuji lets go of his cheeks and sits back down. The seat sighs under him, like it’s just as relieved as he is. “Well, now you know. Everyone else seems to think it’s _impossible _that Ann and I might not wanna date. Holy shit, what about me and Ann not dating is so hard to believe?’

Akira looks off into the middle distance, and Ryuji realizes he’s about to get a real, serious answer to what was supposed to be an offhand question. “It fits a lot of boxes,” Akira says. “Childhood friends. Recently brought together by life threatening circumstances. You get along really well, and have the same sense of humor. Tsundere. From a romance story point of view, it seems almost simple.”

Ryuji grimaces. “Ugh. Hate that. Like people are ever simple.” In his experience, anyone who says people are simple just wants it to be true, so they don’t have to think about them. 

Akira, who knows just as much about that as the rest of the thieves do, hums thoughtfully. “But it wasn’t just that. She ran off after you. Hasn’t left your side since. So it always seemed like you were close enough to date, and when that happened, it was like it’d finally happened.”

Oh, goddammit. The hell could he say? Akira’s totally right. Ann has stuck to him like glue and everyone’s noticed. Not exactly a lot of defenses for that. 

“If that wasn’t a love confession, what--”

“She’s just hovering.” Ryuji tries to look Akira in the eyes, he really does, but the best he can manage is his nose. “Still worried about the Reaper thing. You know Ann. She tries to handle things by doing stuff. Makes her feel better to watch my back.”

“You sound unhappy.”

“Yeah, because I’m not a kid? It was one bad encounter. Did everyone freak out that time Yusuke got knocked flat by that Isis chick?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, okay, but then once he was up everything was fine! No one kept freaking out after it was over.”

Akira takes a second to stir his coffee. Then he says, “Is it over?”

“I--_yeah_? The dude hecked off somewhere, didn’t he?”

“We beat Isis, after she hurt Yusuke. The Reaper is still out there. Like a loose end.”

Ryuji sits up. “I... guess so?” That wasn’t supposed to be a question. What kind of shitty thief sucks at lying this hard?

At least Akira doesn’t seem to notice. “It might take a little longer for everyone to get back to baseline.” He examines his coffee. He’s got the same look he gets in the Metaverse, when he’s planning five moves ahead, lining up ducks in a row, seeing something that no one else can. “The team’s just worried about you,” he says finally, and drains the rest of his coffee.

It’s almost scary how well it all snaps into place, the way Ryuji can see exactly what Akira’s seeing. Ann’s freaking out about the Reaper thing, so she sticks close. Everyone else is still a little freaked out by how close a call that was, and by the fact it’s still out there. The Thieves don’t know what it is or how it works, so they all leap onto the first shreds of normalcy and have some fun imagining Ann and Ryuji dating. Some of them probably even think they’d make a good couple and just wanna push through the awkward hiding. 

But that’s not what’s happening. Well, okay, the part with the rest of the Thieves and the group chat is probably what’s happening. But Ann isn’t just sticking close because she’s worried about the Reaper thing. 

She’s sticking close because of what she saw in Mementos. (Because of Kidd.)

The way Akira’s got it figured makes so much sense, Ryuji has to like. Remind himself he’s wrong. Like if Akira told him the sky was green today Ryuji would have to look out the window to double check. 

Self-confidence is a hell of a drug, Ryuji thinks.

“I guess I’ll just deal with it until they get bored.” Ryuji pokes his straw around in the melted remains of his soda. “What a pain…”

Akira smiles slightly. “I’d offer to say something, but--”

“They’ll all think me n’ Ann got you in on it to cover for us, I know. Still a pain!”

This time Akira actually laughs, that quiet chuckle that feels like it’s sneaking out without his knowing. Then Akira looks at Ryuji again, all sly. “So... you’re actually not dating Ann.”

Ryuji groans. _Wow_, Morgana’s right, huh? Akira’s got it _bad_ for Ann. “Yes, for the hundredth time, I’m not dating Ann! How many times do you want me to say it?!”

“At least one more.”

Ryuji laughs. “You really like her, huh?”

Akira looks at him oddly. “I like both of you.”

“What, you got a thing for blondes?”

“Yes.”

Ryuji chokes. “Dude, you gotta work on that, you can’t just _say _shit.”

*

It’s weird, ‘cause Ryuji went to Leblanc to make sure Akira was alright, but it’s _Ryuji_ who leaves feeling better. Maybe that’s just ‘cause it’s Akira. 

Ryuji opens his phone while he’s waiting for the subway to tell Ann that everything’s cool and square and finds seventeen new messages from Ann, going from vaguely pestering to some kind of alarm, and for a terrible second Ryuji’s convinced that Ann somehow got kidnapped in her own home in the thirty minutes between when he texted her last until he sees the last texts:

> **ANN**: RYUJI MAKE AKIRA ANSWER HIS PHONE  
**ANN**: WHY IS MONA IN MY APARTMENT BRINGING ME A FAMILY PACK OF RAMEN NOODLES  
**ANN**: WHAT KIND OF FAMILY NEEDS TWENTY-FOUR PACKETS OF RAMEN

If Akira still wants to date Ann after she’s through with yelling at him for Morgana bringing her ramen--Akira’s the bravest man on earth.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Maybe you should take a break,” says Joker eventually.

“This _has _to be the right guy,” Skull says, because he’s so sick of listening to Okumura’s robots clatter and chatter he could puke all over his badass Metaverse shoes. “Let’s kick his ass already!”

Panther shushes him. They’re in the reserve team, hanging back and watching Joker talk to yet another giant ugly robot. “We don’t know that yet!”

“If it wasn’t the second guy, or the first guy, its gotta be _this _guy!”

Noir raises her hand slightly. “Why do you think that is the case?”

He nods firmly. “It’s always three guys, that’s how it works.”

Panther looks unimpressed by his reasoning. “That doesn’t make any sense. There’s so many robots here, why would the third one have to be the right one?”

“It makes perfect sense! Three’s like, _the _number!”

Navi chimes in, popped out of the top of Necronomicon. “Skull’s right. Three is the big number. I’d bet 500 yen it’s this guy.”

Panther tilts her head, looking at the ceiling. “I might take that acti--”

“_Show me your true form!” _

“Pay up!”

“No deal, no deal! I didn’t actually say I’d take it!”

“Skull, back me up, she was totally gonna take it.”

“You _did _seem like you were gonna--”

“Oh can it! Some boyfriend you are!”

“_We aren’t dating!”_

“And this is _exactly _why we aren’t.”

“Eh, that’s fair.”

Navi snickers, Noir giggles, and Skull doesn’t know if that means they believe him, but he’s way less worried about it than he was yesterday. It doesn’t seem to matter so much, now that Joker knows that it’s not anything real. Like, sure, maybe they still think he’s dating Panther, but Skull’s had a nearly a whole school year of people believin’ shit about him, and maybe he figures that it really only matters if the important people know what’s up. So long as Joker doesn’t think he’s dating Panther, Skull can live with the rest.

The fight’s pretty intense, so the reserve team watches it close. Gotta make sure you can grab someone and get them away from the action if they go down. Skull’s been on both sides of that. Maybe knocked out more than helpin’ with the knocked out.

Fox knocks the shadow off its feet with a sword stroke too fast to see, then taps Queen in to follow up and signals to be swapped out. Must be out of energy if he’s resorting to physical attacks. He asks to be swapped out, now--Skull thinks that basically every new member had a problem with admitting to Joker when they were out of gas and it always takes some doing to break them of the habit, but some of them are better at it than others, and Fox was always a bad case because most of the time he’d just forget to watch himself, overextend by a mile and a half, and have the nerve to look surprised when he keeled over in Mementos. Joker switches him out for Skull under the cover of Queen’s Freidyne.

The shadow’s one of those assholes paired up with another little fairy asshole that heals them. Joker knocks the shadow off its feet with a Ziodyne and passes to Skull, so Skull figures it’s not exactly rocket science what Joker’s tactic is. The fairy douchebag’s scrambling with his Diarama, but it’s too late: Skull hits the main shadow with his own Ziodyne, passes it back to Joker, who hits it again; the fairy scrambles for another heal, but Skull’s last Ziodyne gets it right in the chest, and it bursts into ashes and yen.

Queen’s finally found whatever the hell they use to bring down defense wards, and the fairy shrieks like they’ve stripped it naked when its defenses vanish. Before it can even raise its hands for an attack, Noir and Skull gun it down.

“Good shot!” Skull exclaims.

“It seems their teamwork was no match for ours,” says Noir with that little smile she does when she’s smug about makin’ her dad’s shitty brain demons eat Metaverse pavement.

“_Hell_ yes! Suck it, little fairy dudes--”

The shift is so small.

Skull almost doesn’t notice. It’s right in the middle of the high of winning, of the shadow bursting into pieces, finally clearing a path to the factory floor. But he does notice.

Kidd hasn’t gone away.

The last time Skull used Kidd was the Ziodyne, wasn’t it? Which had been almost a minute ago.

He turns, so slightly, raising his canon, right in front of everyone, no warning. The pain only kicks into Skull’s lungs at the moment Kidd decides to raise his gun. The second stretches into forever, pulled into the thinnest strings and Skull realizes exactly what happening when Kidd’s cannon lights up in front of his face, aimed between his eyes, right at his mask--

(_Oh, please_, he thinks. _Not here. Not in front of everyone. Come on. Even if it’s not enough, I’m still doing my best. I can’t let this team down, too._)

\--and deep inside Kidd’s death-yellow eyes he thinks he can see something like--like something alive, something sentient, a moment of recognition--and Skull knows that Kidd knows. Kidd knows everything about him. I am thou, thou art I; they are the same; Kidd has always known exactly who and what Skull is and every time Skull’s pleaded with Kidd to stop going out of control in front of everyone, instead of being some crazy mad dog out of his mind, Kidd knows _exactly_ what he’s doing.

And Kidd is pulling the trigger anyway.

“_AGIDYNE!”_

_Burning_, inside his shitty head, like the fire in his lungs got dumped with gasoline, Skull’s on the floor and Kidd’s flung backwards, but he’s _not gone, _Skull still feels Kidd, he can’t breathe right. Why the hell can’t he breathe? Kidd’s all the way across the goddamn room, it doesn’t make any sense at all.

The other Thieves are screaming. Skull can hear them, their words muddled into nonsense by his pain and confusion. Only Panther’s voice stands out loud and clear.

She was on reserve. She has magic to spare. She extends one arm, straight-backed, eyes on her prey. It’s not the pose of someone playing at a cartoon villain or a sexy temptress. It’s the look of a woman on a mission, and that mission will accept no quarter, no hesitation, not even a whimpered plea for mercy.

“_BLAZING HELL!_”

Carmen blooms behind her like an avenging angel and they burn Captain Kidd to a smoldering, bony shipwreck on the ground.

Skull’s shrieking before he can tell himself to stop.

It’s heat outside, _inside_, the flames licking him clean through his organs through to the floor beneath him. It’s different from a shadow, somehow _worse_ because Panther doesn’t let up at all, doesn’t throw fire around in broad strokes like the shadow grunts: she _aims_ for one spot and drills clear through and incinerates everything in her path until there’s nothing left. Maybe it’s just ‘cause he wasn’t expecting it to hurt, or he’s always braced himself for it when a shadow comes at him--it’s different when he can see it coming or at least _expects_ to get roughed up in a fight. Why does this hurt so much?

Kidd disintegrates with a fire-soaked howl, and Skull blacks out just as Queen round-house kicks Panther in the gut.

*

Skull’s unconscious for this part, but they tell him later that he comes out of it with one of the worst cases of burn they’d ever seen. Except that usually shadows wind up with burns when Panther lands a good shot, or Fox winds up with burn when a shadow catches him at a bad time. It’s the first time they’ve ever had a Persona inflict burn on… well, another Persona.

He wakes up with Mona and Joker’s faces right above him, Joker’s arm propping Skull up, and Joker’s mask isn’t nearly big enough to hide how wide his eyes are. “The Diarama should take care of the burn,” Mona says in a small voice. Joker puts a hand on Mona’s head in thanks, but he’s still staring at Ryuji head to toe, like he thinks Mona might’ve missed a spot, or he just can’t believe Skull’s alright. Or not alright.

Behind Joker, Panther’s standing up, but her hands are on her knees. She’s doubled over, panting like she just won a marathon and just as tired and victorious. From the way Mona’s looking at her, you’d think he just walked in on her killing a small animal with a box cutter, instead.

“Panther.” Fox’s hand is on his sword.

“Scan Panther for Brainwash,” Queen orders Navi.

“What?!” Skull exclaims.

“None, obviously,” says Navi. From the set of Queen’s jaw, that’s exactly what Queen was afraid of. “Look, just wait a second, Queen, let’s not jump to any conclusions--”

“Give--” Panther inhales as deep as she can. “Give me a second, okay?”

“Lay off her!” Skull exclaims. “She didn’t do anythin’ wrong!”

Everyone stares at Skull like he’s grown a second head. “She _attacked_ you,” Queen says. Fox circles around behind Panther. Skull recognizes what he’s doing right off the bat: It’s his favorite place to stand when they’re holding a shadow at gunpoint, if Joker (or Queen) gives the word.

“No, no, it’s not her _fault_, she was just--” What, doing Skull a favor? Maybe saving his life from his own shitty Persona? How’s he supposed to explain that actually Panther was right on the money without explaining all the stupid bullshit that Kidd’s been up to lately?

Is Panther going to take the fall for _Skull’s_ mistakes?

“Scan Skull for Brainwash,” Queen says eventually.

“Hey! _Excuse _you!”

“Queen, I think we’d _know_ if he was brainwashed,” says Navi doubtfully. “Can we, um, maybe not fight--”

“Leave Panther alone!” Skull snaps at Fox, who gives him a nonplussed look from behind his mask.

Noir cuts in: “Hold on a moment, everyone! I thought I saw--I _know _I saw Skull’s Persona doing something strange!”

Navi perks up immediately, extremely relieved to have a good reason for the fighting to end. “Oh, you too? Oh, geez, thank god, I really thought I was going crazy!”

“Unless we’re both going crazy,” says Noir, “I’m almost certain Captain Kidd was going to attack Skull.”

Silence. Skull coulda heard a pin drop. Joker’s hand is still on Skull’s back.

“HA!” Panther cries, pointing at Skull. “I _told_ you! I _knew_ you were lying when you said Kidd wasn’t going to do anything bad to you!”

“I wasn’t _lyin’_! He coulda just been aimin’ at me ‘cause--I dunno--he lost his balance or something--”

Panther jabs her finger more forcefully at him. “Now you’re just lying to _yourself_! He totally was trying to kill you!”

“That’s not possible,” says Queen. She’s still staring at Panther.

“It’s true!” Panther says hotly. “You really think I grilled Skull over for no reason?!”

Skull tries to sit up on his own. Panther winces on his behalf.

“I don’t know what I think,” says Queen, which is totally not true. From her steely tone, she’s convincing herself more and more with every passing second that her theory is right and Panther’s turned traitor or whatever the hell Queen’s on about.

“Wait, wait! Navi, what did you see?” Noir prompts.

Navi tries to straighten up again. “I have data! I don’t have video footage of the moment, but Noir and I definitely saw with our own eyes that Kidd was aiming at Skull. You know how I can sense when a shadow’s about to attack? I have data on that too. Captain Kidd didn’t just have bad aim. He was going to fire.”

_Oh, god dammit_, Skull thinks to himself.

“And one more thing….” Navi pulls up her fancy glowy-green interface thing and starts pressing buttons. “It wasn’t long, but at the last second, Captain Kidd did _something_ weird, like a glitch. I couldn’t get a bead on it, and it kept flipping back and forth between a bunch of different readings--a shadow, a hostile, a person, a Persona, and even some stuff that I’d never seen before…” She chews her lip. “...It was like it was unstable.”

“Alright,” says Fox. “I, for one, would like to know what’s going on.” He takes his hand off his sword, but he crosses his arms instead, which somehow doesn’t feel like an improvement. “Panther, if you’d start from the beginning?”

“Wait wait wait wait--”

“No!” Panther says, jabbing a finger at Skull. “I’m done waiting! We should’ve told everyone from the start! I saw Kidd attack him before, and I wasn’t going to let it happen again!”

Skull buries his head in his hands. God _dammit_.

“How many times has this happened.” Joker’s voice isn’t asking.

“What does it matter?!” Skull interrupts Panther. “I’ve got it handled, I don’t need all of you butting into my goddamn business.”

Joker’s got this weird look on his face. Skull hesitates. Now everyone else is looking at him too with various expressions of concern (or as much expression as Fox ever gets on his pretty-boy face). Skull squirms.

“...It’s nothing,” says Skull, and adds under his breath: “I dunno. Three times.”

“Skull what the actual _fuck_,” Navi says loudly.

“Navi!”

Navi rounds on Queen. “Are you really going to lecture me about language right now?!”

“Three,” Joker says, in a dazed voice that Ryuji barely ever hears from him. Usually when Joker’s floored by something, he just doesn’t say anything.

Skull decides right then and there, he’s taking that first attack in Okumura’s Palace to his grave. It doesn’t count. Kidd didn’t even manifest.

“These attacks--” Fox starts, and Panther jumps in before he can get another word out.

“I went after Skull in Mementos and walked in on Kidd _strangling _him.”

Skull stands up, anger pushing past the lingering exhaustion and pain. “It wasn’t like that!”

Panther gives no quarter: “Oh, sorry, what was happening? Exactly? Because I’m pretty sure I saw him holding you_ down_ by the_ neck_!”

Skull bolts to his feet. Sparks are crackling in his brain and fingers. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, but he’s _so mad, _full of it like he hasn’t been in a while. Skull can’t see clearly, all he wants to do it kick something in the goddamn head. Panther doesn’t even flinch, like she’s just so sure that Skull would never _really_ attack her, that Skull’s the sort of person who’d never punch his friends, and Skull really _wishes_ he could say that she’s right, but _right then_\--

Someone puts a hand on his chest and pushes him and Panther apart. It’s Queen, eyes full of steel, but not looking at Panther anymore. She’s looking at Skull, like if she stares hard enough she’ll pull out all the answers from Skull’s brain. “You said this happened three times. There was the one just now. The one in Mementos. Was the first time when the Reaper attacked? Was that why you gave us such a vague answer?”

Skull hates a lot of things. Being interrogated is pretty high on the list. “What, suddenly you don’t trust me? Is that it?”

“You’re trying to blow this off!” Navi says, practically yelling. “You don’t get to! I saw what Kidd was about to do to your head! Whatever it was, it was _S Rank! _Strong enough that Queen’s theory makes sense to me!”

“Skull," says Joker quietly.

“What?!” Skull snaps, rounding on Joker. “You too?!”

“We just want to _help_!” Panther says angrily.

Yeah, and that's what Skull _hates_. 

The _worst_ goddamn part of this shitty mess is that Skull _knows_ they’re trying to help. He knows they’re trying to help, dammit! He ain’t stupid, and he ain’t some paranoid asshole who thinks all his friends are out to get him for no good reason. Kidd’s being _weird_, and even if he isn’t actually trying to kill Skull, it sure as hell looks like he is. The rest of the thieves would have to be as dumb as he is to ignore it.

But he doesn’t feel it. He _feels_ like everyone’s yelling at him, like he’s somehow getting the blame pinned on him for something that just started happening one day, like he’s makin’ everything worse just by standing there an daring to _exist_. It’s digging into his brain like screws. No, wrong way, like the Thieves are trying unscrew the little bits of metal holding his shitty head together, to pry open Skull and see whatever cog or gear went loose. So they can deal with the _problem. _Like Skull’s some kind of headcase that needs pity, needs teachers look at him like he’s a letdown and a problem and a sick dog in need of a flu shot all at once; or some oh-so poor victim to feel bad for; or another punk letting his team down all over again. Skull feels less like flesh and blood and more like just one long crackle of lightning and roaring thunder and--and--

Skull wheels around and sprints down the hallway.

“Hey!” Panther shouts. “Where’re you going?! _Skull_!”

Skull runs like hell and prays that, for once, he can outrun his own temper.

*

That was stupid. That was so goddamn stupid. That was the stupidest thing Skull’s ever done in his entire life, and it had stiff competition making it to first place. What kind of shitty moron is he? The hell kind of brain does he even have, thinking something as dumb as blowing up at the only friends he has in the world was smart. Stupid. Goddamn stupid asshole.

He stalks through the shiny chrome halls. He’s not even hiding; if a Shadow wants a fight, he’ll give it one. Navi can find him, he knows that, but he’s hoping she doesn’t want to.

_She won’t, cause you probably scared her, you asshole. _

God, Navi got freaked out when he started raising his voice, how the hell is she gonna react to him swinging his pipe around?

The thought of Navi’s face drains the energy right out of him. He stops dead in his tracks. Leans up against the wall. Slides down and sits there like he’s a broken robot himself.

God. He really screwed up this time.

He has no idea how long he spends just sitting there, feeling sorry for himself, but he’s not surprised when it’s Joker who slinks his way up the opposite side of the catwalk like a dark ink stain crawling its way through the metal halls. “Hey,” Skull says. “Sorry for runnin’ off. Should’ve split up the group like that in a place like this, huh.”

“Navi knew where you were.”

Yeah, Skull figured. “Where’s everyone else?” Skull doesn’t wanna see any of them right now, but splitting up the party in a Palace this big is probably not the best plan ever.

“By the exit.” He taps his ear. “Navi’s on comm.”

_But not on comms with me_.

God _dammit_ he screwed up.

“Are you... okay?” Joker says eventually.

Skulls digs his fingers into his hair. “I—yes? Yeah. I’m fine, I just…”

This isn’t the way it’s supposed to go. Ever since Akira came to Shujin, it was Akira all closed off, pretendin’ he doesn’t even know how to smile like he’s a real thug underneath his nerd image. Pretendin’ that it’s all cool that his parents don’t call and he’s too busy to wonder and the probation thing doesn’t still mess him up and he can’t hear everyone on planet earth whispering about _Akira Kurusu the delinquent, he’ll kill you if you even look at him_. It’s fine, Akira would say, which was such bullshit and also horseshit, like Akira’s just fine with being a ghost in his own school and his own life and it never bothers him and it never tastes like freedom to rip into a shadow in Mementos after school. Skull gets it. Akira’s got too much pride to admit when shit sucks.

But dude, turnabout _really_ sucks.

“I’m just. Frustrated. Is all.”

Joker glances at Skull sideways. Skull’s not sure what he sees there, but it changes his face. He looks away.

His white, stylized mask doesn’t hide Joker’s face so much as accent it, but Joker’s face is a pretty good mask most of the time anyway. Skull’s alright at seeing some of the stuff going on under it, but only enough to know there’s a lot more he misses. Sometimes, it’s hilarious; like when he can see Joker slam the mask on for dealing with nosey, stupid adult. _Yessir, Nosir, Thank you very kindly sir. _Skull loves watching Joker work an adult, because they’re just so willing to believe the bullshit, that Joker gives even half a damn being _polite _or _respectable_.

Other times, Skull sees it shift. Move into a different position, and that’s the signal that Joker’s been wearing a mask for their whole conversation, that he’s been hiding something. Or trying to. As good as Joker is with adults, Skull’s got the knack now. He’s not as good at wearing a mask as he thinks he is. Or wishes he was, maybe.

No, that’s not it either. Joker is really damn good at masks. It’s more like… Joker has too much for a mask to hide. He’s got too many thoughts and feelings to cover all the way, so they slip out, if you’re looking for them.

The most Skull had ever seen him, the most unhinged and free of any masks-- was when Akira’s face was bleeding in Kamoshida’s dungeon, eyes wide and wild with triumph as he burst into blue flames.

(It looked like it hurt, when Akira did it. It looked like it hurt a lot. But he stayed standing. He didn’t fall over and scream on the ground. He didn’t lose track of his body in a haze of burning, pulling pain. All the other’s awakenings had been more like Akira’s, and less like Ryuji’s. Maybe something was wrong with Kidd from the start, and it’s only just now that Skull’s noticed.)

Skull groans loudly. Scrubs at his hair again like it’ll calm him down. “Dammit! God. God dammit. This _blows_. I freaked everyone out back there, didn’t I?”

Joker does that cocky, flippant head tilt, like he doesn’t know what Skull’s talking about.

“Guess I gotta do a whole stupid apology tour,” Skull mutters. He’s always screwing up like that. Like he’s running around after himself, tryin’ to clean up after his own dumbass mistakes. You’d think he’d learn to just _not_ be stupid, right? But noooooooo, he still yells and clomps around and hurts good people like he’s a little clone of his dad, like the shittiness is hardwired in him.

“Apologizing would do some good.” Joker pulls a leg up and leans on his knee. “But I think we’d rather understand what’s happening.

Yeah, somehow, that’s worse. “There isn’t much more to say,” says Skull to his own boots. “Aside from what you already heard. Kidd’s done it three times. First time he tried to use his cannon, though.”

“So it’s getting worse.”

Denial leaps to his lips, but the way Joker just _says it, _the thing Skull had been working so hard not to notice, knocks the wind out of him. This, whatever the hell _this _is, went from a weird asthma attack to Captain Kidd trying to shoot him point blank in the goddamn face. Whatever’s going on, there’s pretty good money on it getting worse before it gets better.

The pause goes on for too long. Joker fills in the blank with a _yes, _and Skull loses his moment to insist that everything’s fine.

Skull feels something on his back, feather light. He turns, and sees Joker touching his back with his bright red glove. Just barely, almost hovering. Skull doesn’t push him away, and Joker’s hand settles on his shoulder. 

“Maybe you should take a break,” says Joker eventually.

Oh, god _dammit_. Like Skull’s back in fifth grade and the teacher’s telling him to go take a walk and cool down because he can’t keep a lid on his big fat mouth. “No way,” Skull says hotly. He pulls away from Joker, stands up and paces towards the center of the container. “We’ve got a deadline down our necks! Noir’s dad is on the line! Okumura Foods is the biggest fish we’re ever gonna fry, and you want me to take a _break_?”

“I talked it over with Navi. If your Persona is attacking you, it might even be dangerous for you to be in the Metaverse at all right now. We can’t risk it until we know what’s happening—“

“Are you kicking me off the team?” Skull asks in disbelief.

Joker grabs him by the arm and pulls him around to stare at him. Joker’s eyes look weirdly red in the Metaverse. “I don’t want you to _die_,” Joker says quietly, like it’s any kinda secret that Joker’s got a huge bleeding heart and gets ten kinds of effed up if any one of the thieves gets so much as a scratch during battle.

“I’m… I’m not gonna _die_…” says Skull uneasily. It feels weird, someone caring about him. He doesn’t like it. “Ain’t we risking our lives every day as the Phantom Thieves, anyway? What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that we have no idea what the hell is going on,” says Joker immediately. “It’s not forever. It’s just until we figure this out.”

Joker’s face is _really_ close to him, and Skull wonders if Joker knows how much of an open book he’s being right now. He looks like Skull’s got his heart in his open hand. Skull looks down. Scrubs at his hair.

“You’re not kickin’ me off the Phantom Thieves,” says Skull. It’s a statement. “I was there when we made the thing. I’m not going anywhere. This is just until we figure out what’s up with Kidd.”

Joker sighs with relief. Nods. Skull laughs weakly and punches him on the shoulder. “Geez, you’re that worried about me?”

Joker rubs the back of his neck, but doesn’t respond.

“Ain’t Navi still on comms? She’s probably laughin’ at you right now.”

“_You should hear him when he thinks he’s alone in Leblanc_,” says Navi’s voice in Skull’s ear suddenly. Apparently Navi wasn’t just eavesdropping on Joker only. “_Did you know he talks to the curry when he’s stirring it?_”

“What about it,” says Joker.

“_You know when the rice cooker beeps and does that fun sing-song tune? I heard him sing along with it once!_”

“It’s catchy,” says Joker.

Skull snickers at him, but Joker doesn’t lose that worried, unhappy set to his mouth even as Navi teases him. _Maybe I should’ve told him about Kidd from the start_, Skull thinks vaguely, if only so he doesn’t have to see Joker this worried. But then he thinks: _Who’s gonna watch his back if I’m not in the Metaverse with him?_ _The hell am I supposed to do with myself if I’m just sitting on my ass in the real world while everyone else risks their lives? Everyone’s out there fighting to make things right and I’m just gonna do _nothing_ like some kinda no-good loser?_

What’s really the difference between Skull dying in the Metaverse because of Kidd, and Skull hearing hours after the fact that Joker died alone in a palace because Skull wasn’t there to protect him?

*

“It’s a good thing,” says Ann’s tinny voice through the cell phone. “First of all, nobody thinks we're dating anymore, so _that's_ a relief. And second of all, seriously, it’s freaky, what Kidd was doing.”

“Don’t mean that I—“ Ryuji cranks up the volume again like he hasn’t already got it set to max and puts his phone on his other shoulder. All around him, the laundromat washing machines and dryers thump and rattle, and some old guy across the way gives Ryuji a dirty look from over his crossword. “Don’t mean I gotta get benched! We’re in the middle of a—a thing! A you-know!”

A Palace, which wouldn’t make a lot of sense to anyone eavesdropping, but he definitely can’t say _We’re in the middle of a heist_.

Ann’s voice sighs. “You didn’t see the way Kidd looked.”

“Uh-uh. He’s mine. I know what he looks like, thanks.”

“Then you should know it looked _super_ bad! Futaba’s been texting Akira nonstop about it.”

Ryuji pauses in the middle of shoving his ma’s bra into the dryer. “What, cause I yelled…?”

“No! Because nobody has any idea what’s going on! Even Mona says he’s never seen anything like it.”

“Yeah, but that shitty cat doesn’t know half the answers he’s supposed to.”

Ann sighs on the other end of the line. Really dramatic one too, cause Ryuji can hear it over all the background laundry noise. “He’s doing his best…”

Ryuji can’t argue with that, but he does anyway. “Yeah. Well.”

“Didn’t he explain how it all worked to you and Akira in the first place?”

“I never said he didn’t know _nothing. _I just said he didn’t know has much as he’s supposed to. Big difference!”

“Hmmm… double negatives aside, that doesn’t change the main point. None of us know what’s going on with Kidd, so until we do, isn’t it better to not risk it?”

Ryuji grumbles nonsense under his breath. He’s got the lights and the darks sorted, but now he’s debating on if he wants to go the extra mile and sort out the whites into their own load. He swears they come out lookin better when he does, but Mom never seems to notice. He checks his change, and decides to go for it. Not like he was going to get much homework done tonight either way.

The dinky laundromat two blocks away from their apartment building isn’t much to look at, or smell, but the machines work and don’t eat socks like the other laundromat just down the street. It’s late, which means slow traffic for a lot of business, but a lot of traffic for laundromats. Ryuji’s got dibs on a machine with 3 minutes left, which is bein babysat by an old guy with inch thick glasses and a horrible fake hairdo on. They’ve done the little laundromat ritual, exchanging the minimum amount of words to establish that yeah, it is the old guy’s clothes in there, and yeah, Ryuji wants it next. He’ll get the darks in first, then keep an eye out for any other machines opening up. Especially a dryer, letting wet laundry sit out without a dryer is the worst.

“Ryuji!”

“What?!” His phone slips out of his shoulder grasp and Ryuji fumbles it for what feels like at least five minutes. Finally he gets a firm grip on it. Thank god, if he drops it on the tile the cheap phone would break for sure.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you! But--” Shit, codewords, codewords for public, uuuuuh-- “This _project _is a pretty big one. Are you sure me sitting out is gonna get it done on time?”

_Before Noir gets sold off to Kamoshida Two: Electric Boogaloo. _

“There are a lot of us,” Ann says. “We’ll be a little more careful, but it’s not like we burn through everyone’s magic every time we go in. Heck, there were a couple times in Futaba’s Palace I never got the front line.”

What Ann is not saying is that the only reason she didn’t get front line was because a lot of shit in Futaba’s palace shrugged off fire. Ryuji scowls at his phone, trying to figure out if she knows that.

“Still--”

“Look, Ryuji, it’s fine. I’m sure whatever it is, we can figure it out. Futaba will look you over in the Metaverse, do some of her scans, and then… we’ll figure out the problem.”

The washing machine door slams shut with a _clang! _Everyone else in the laundromat flinches, and then turns to give him a dirty look. Ryuji acts like he doesn’t care.

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Ryuji, come on.”

“Gotta go, laundry needs doin.”

He hangs up on Ann, and bites the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t do something stupid in the good laundromat. He can’t risk messing it up here, not unless he wants to start losing socks again. Ryuji knows those machines ate them, he _triple _checked.

So what if Ann’s siding with Akira, making Ryuji sit in the back like a stupid, useless kid. He can handle that. It makes everything inside him twist up like at any second he’s gonna scream, but he can handle it. Being angry while doing the laundry is a wild new experience, at least. Usually he gets into a chill zone. But nope. Today he’s pissed, and that makes what is supposed to be chill feel like stewing. Turning over his thoughts until he’s getting all worked up again.

He swears this is the kinda mood that makes shadows real good punching bags, so he can put all this bad energy to some kinda good, but he just had to go and get _benched_, didn’t he.

*

**PRIVATE GROUP CHAT “DEFINITELY NOT THE PHANTOM THIEVES”**

> **MAKOTO**: The deadline is drawing nearer.  
**MAKOTO**: Are we going into the palace today?  
**FUTABA**: isn’t it still like 8 am  
**FUTABA**: we never decide if we’re going in before noon lol  
**MAKOTO**: It’s always good to ask.  
**AKIRA**: Let’s go today  
**FUTABA**: WHOA  
**FUTABA**: SOMEONE’S GOT HIS CALENDAR IN ORDER  
**MAKOTO**: Oh, good.  
**HARU**: The usual place, then?  
**ANN**: Oh we’re going today???  
**ANN**: Kk guess i’m failing the quiz tomorrow  
**MAKOTO**: …  
**ANN**: SHHH saving the world is more important!!!  
**AKIRA**: Let’s finish this quickly  
**FUTABA**: someone’s motivated lololololol  
**FUTABA**: “siri clear my calendar i have crimes to commit”  
**ANN**: Time to get fired up!!!!

*

Ryuji spends the whole day wondering if he’s supposed to show up if he’s not even going into the Metaverse. What’s he supposed to do--just stand there and wish ‘em luck while they head out? He kinda wants to. Kinda doesn’t wanna be a sore loser about it. Kinda doesn’t wanna skulk around Shujin like he’s a criminal in his own high school.

He shows up.

“Good luck, guys. You got this,” he says. He feels like a soccer mom. Maybe he should’ve brought snacks for the team to take with them; that would’ve really been all he can do. Ann does a peace symbol because she thinks she’s cute. Ryuji rolls his eyes.

Makoto gives him a short nod. She looks a little guilty, for some reason. Haru smiles brightly. “We’ll be back in a few hours! No time at all.”

Ryuji beams right back and gives her a thumbs up. Behind her, Akira watches him as Makoto activates the nav, and then they fade out and disappear. It really does look kinda weird to watch it from the outside, honestly.

And then they’re gone, and Ryuji’s standing on the sidewalk alone, with four hours to kill and nothing to do.

Ryuji’s smile disappears.

Well, it’s not like this could suck any more than it already does.

*

It _can _suck more than it already does, Ryuji finds out, when he spends the duration of the team’s next Metaverse trip with his ass in detention.

“I wasn’t _loiterin’_,” says Ryuji hotly, sweeping the teacher’s lounge with a vengeance while Kawakami sits at her desk, shuffling papers.

“The roof is off limits and the school _is_ shut down after hours,” says Kawakami, entirely unfazed. “There’s no good reason for you to be up there.”

“Yeah, but ‘s not like I had a _bad_ reason, either!”

Kawakami gives him an unimpressed look, like, _Do you expect me to believe that with your history?_

Damn, something’s gotten into Kawakami lately, he swears. She never used to give a rat’s ass about all kinds of shit he did if it meant that it’d give her more work to do, and she was always high-tailing it out of school the second the bell rang, but now here is she is, poring over a pile of homework at six at night and goin’ out of her way to bust his ass for sitting on a roof.

Well, maybe old habits will die hard? Ryuji shoves the dustpan in the trash can and shakes vigorously to get all the dirt out. Maybe Kawakami’s just giving him hell just to give him hell. Or maybe she was just lookin’ for a good spring cleaning and Ryuji was in the wrong place--

“Also, I called your mother,” says Kawakami.

“_What_?! You didn’t have to do _that_!”

“It’s been a long time since you were in detention,” says Kawakami, entirely unfazed. “Seems like the sort of thing your mother needs to know, doesn’t it?”

Ryuji covers his face. “Shit,” he mumbles.

“Language, Sakamoto-kun.” Kawakami shoves her pen behind her ear and leans back to pin Ryuji with a glare. Damn, he doesn’t remember her looking quite so sharp. (Or well-rested. Maybe she’s just in a mood ‘cause she got enough sleep.) “We thought you were finally turning it around,” she says eventually. “I’m not your homeroom teacher, but last faculty meeting, even Ushimaru-sensei seemed almost impressed.”

Ryuji goggles at her. “_Him_? Mr Hardass?”

“Yes, Mr Hardass,” says Kawakami without blinking an eye. “We’re not blind, Sakamoto-kun. We know you had your differences with Kamoshida-sensei, and…” Her eyes skitter off unhappily towards her left. “After all that came to light…”

Ryuji scowls. “Yeah, well,” he says, and nothing else.

“Yes. Well.” Kawakami sighs. She looks almost on the verge of apologizing, but then--for whatever reason--thinks better of it. “You got a lot better about staying out of trouble ever since he left. What happened this time?”

“Nothin’,” says Ryuji automatically.

“Nothing?”

“Yeah. Just wanted a nice sunbath on the roof.”

“In October,” says Kawakami.

“Gotta get my vitamin D, ma’am, what about it?” says Ryuji, like a proper smartass delinquent.

Kawakami actually cracks a smile at that, which fully convinces Ryuji that Kawakami’s been replaced by a pod person sometime during the last semester. “Fine. But I’m warning you to stay out of trouble, Sakamoto-kun. I believe you weren’t on the roof doing anything wrong, but other teachers won’t look kindly on it--not with your history, whether or not Kamoshida-sensei is still here or not, whether or not you’ve been improving lately. Don’t put a toe out of line. Your reputation can’t handle it. I won’t put this down on your school file either--”

“Wait, _really_?!”

“--but,” she goes on, “_don’t_ make this a habit. I’ll cover for you once and only once. Next time you’re out of line, I’m making a note of it, and Ushimaru-sensei _will_ give you hell.”

Ryuji feels himself break out into a huge grin despite himself. “You’re a real one, Kawakami-sensei.”

“Hmph,” she says, still giving him that sharp look. “Are you _sure_ nothing happened lately?”

Even if Ryuji wanted to share his life story with a cop--oh, sorry, a teacher--he couldn’t, ‘cause he can’t exactly explain he got busted from the Metaverse ‘cause his soul-demon keeps tryin’ to beat him up in a dark alley. “I’m sure. Won’t cause you any trouble again.”

“Do that. And get that bit of tile behind the staff couch before you go, it’s gross back there. Why don’t teenage boys know how to properly clean a room?” she mutters for some reason, and turns back to her papers.

*

“I’m home!” Ryuji says loudly, dumping his keys in the key bowl, and turns the corner to see his mom holding the house phone and looking at him like she just came back from a funeral.

“You were in detention?” Mom says quietly.

Ah, _shit_.

“Wait, no, it wasn’t like that!” Ryuji says. “It was nothing, I swear, it was just a mistake!”

Mom gives him a sad look. _Shit_! This isn’t fair! He’s trying his best, okay, he’s _trying_!

“A teacher said that you were hanging around by yourself on the roof after school hours?” she says. "I thought we talked about… this."

It takes Ryuji a second to even remember what she's thinking of, and then it hits him like a truck. Yeah, Mom literally did just sit him down and talk to him about being worried--what, a week ago? Less? And in all the weird bullshit that happened since Ryuji just _forgot_, and fell right back into bad habits. Got detention for hanging out on the roof, like he was waiting for something. Waiting around someplace he isn't supposed to be is the textbook goddamn definition of '_Your son is doing gang shit, probably involving drugs!_' How the hell is he gonna explain that?

“Wait, no, it’s not what you think, ma,” says Ryuji quickly. “I was just--I dunno, it wasn’t anything, I swear. The roof wasn’t even off limits until Mak--until the student president decided to make it off limits just to give us a hard time. I was just hanging out there!”

“‘Give _us_ a hard time’? Who’s us?”

“Nobody!” Ryuji says immediately, and then thinks: _Holy effin’ shit I’m in so much trouble_. Shit, shit, shit. “My--my friends,” says Ryuji. “Not, like, gang members or anything. Good friends! We weren’t doing anything weird, I swear, it was just a quiet place where teachers wouldn’t bother us and nobody would overhear us--not that we were talkin’ about anything bad! We were just… just...”

Mom looks like she doesn’t believe him at all. Ryuji hates it because it isn’t anything like the look Ann gives him when she doesn’t believe him, like she’s caught him pulling a fast one on her, or the look teachers give him when they don’t believe him, like he’s a speck beneath their shoe and they’re getting ready to grind him further into the dirt. She looks like she _wants_ to believe him, desperately, but she just--can’t.

“We weren’t doing anything bad,” Ryuji says desperately. “Or--I didn’t _mean_ to do anything bad…”

Mom hangs her head. She looks exhausted. “Is it going to continue?” she asks.

“The detentions? No! ‘Course not! I’m not _trying_ to get in trouble, I was even doing my homework and everything the last couple of months!”

Mom nods tiredly. Ryuji realizes belatedly that he said that he _was_ doing his homework, past tense. _Did_ he do his math homework for today? He meant to, he swears, he’s trying, he swears--why does he have to make his mom’s life so hard? “I’m really trying, Mom. I promise.”

“I know you are,” she says. But she doesn’t smile.

*

Suddenly Ryuji goes to school paranoid every day.

He can’t talk to the Phantom Thieves because everyone looks at him like he’s going to keel over any second, even though he’s not even in the Metaverse and Captain Kidd can’t get him here. He can’t go to the school gym or the track because the track team’s there, glaring at him like he personally murdered all their dogs. Kawakami keeps eagle-eying him from across the room every time there’s an assembly. Every time he so much as looks at the door to the school roof, or the scribbles on the stalls in the boys’ bathrooms, or even sees Ushimaru in the halls, he thinks about Kawakami telling him that a kid like him can’t afford to put a single toe out of line.

By the sixth day of this, he sprint through the school gates exactly one minute before the bell rings, and has the sudden urge to scream at the top of his lungs.

He can’t do this. He’d rather just self-destruct and get the inevitable disaster over with than constantly be looking over his shoulder, paranoid that his every move will be the one that destroys his school record once and for all. He’s almost certain that they don’t have enough cause to expel him, even with all the junk he’s gotten up to in the last year, and he’s pretty sure that they don’t _want_ to expel him considering the Kamoshida thing and how bad it’d look if word got out that Kamoshida injured him so seriously, but he’s _also_ sure that it wouldn’t take much more for them to just give him the axe. He’s used to being a wanted fugitive in his own school, but for the last few months, at least Akira and Ann and even Makoto had had his back, and it’s like he’d totally forgotten how raw and shitty it was--or maybe that he’s gone back in time altogether, and he’s just gotten his leg broken and kicked off the team, and he’s alone and avoiding his teammates and feeling like he’d rather just blow up into a million pieces than have to go through one more day of this.

He skids into first period and his phone buzzes--probably the Thieves planning their Palace run later today. Ushimaru gives him a glare from across the room, and Ryuji gives him a sour look back. Ryuji puts his phone on silent, and then turns it off altogether.

And just like that, he doesn’t see or hear from the Thieves for the next four days.

*

Akira doesn’t initiate things much. He’s kinda like a vampire, where he’s gotta be invited in before he can slide in through your door. So Ryuji figures, it’s on him, really, to make sure that Akira knows where he’s at, that he’s around if Akira wants to hang, that yeah, he _does_ wanna see Akira’s face, _no_, he’s not bothering him. Ryuji’s usually the one who texts Akira first, is what he’s saying.

Which is what makes it especially screwy when Ryuji opens the door and sees Akira standing outside his apartment.

“Uh… hi? Dude, what’re you doing here?”

Akira lowers his hand, curled into a light fist like he was about to knock.

“Wait, actually, more important question,” says Ryuji. “How’d you get my address?”

“...Futaba,” says Akira. “Makoto said it was an abuse of power.”

Well, that’s a lot of big words to describe what’s probably right, but mostly Ryuji knows that it’s pissing him off. Ryuji eyes the space between Akira and the doorway, trying to figure out if he can squeeze past Akira. “Ain’t you guys supposed to be in the Palace?”

“We cancelled today. It was in the group chat.”

Oh, yeah, that thing Ryuji’s been ignoring. “Uh, alright? Don’t you got part time jobs to do, then?”

Akira keeps watching Ryuji watching the space between Akira and the door. The impression of a vampire desperately trying to be invited in but can’t quite ask increases, but it wouldn’t be an issue if Akira would get a clue and let Ryuji pass. “We hadn’t heard from you in a while.”

Oh, so Akira’s checkin’ in on him, like Akira’s his parole officer, huh? “Alright. Well, I’m here. I’m not dead. Said I wasn’t going in the Metaverse, didn’t I?”

“Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“I’m headin’ out, yeah.” Not to do anything important, but Akira doesn’t need to know that. “You coulda texted ahead if you wanted to come over.”

“I did. You didn’t respond.”

Ryuji didn’t see, but honestly, Ryuji probably wouldn’t have responded even if he had. When’s Akira gonna catch a clue that Ryuji doesn’t wanna talk? He already got grilled from Kawakami and Kawakami isn’t even his homeroom teacher, geez.

Akira’s still standing there, not lettin Ryuji pass, and it’s actually starting to piss him off. “Okay, dude, can I go or…?”

“Already?” says Akira, like it might not have ever occurred to him that Ryuji might have other places to be, which Ryuji _doesn’t_ but _again_ Ryuji maintains that’s none of his business right now. “Ryuji, we haven’t heard anything from you in almost a week. Ann says you’ve been avoiding her--”

“I ain’t avoiding anyone,” says Ryuji sharply, instead of what he really wants to say, which is _What are you, a cop?_ Which, for obvious reasons, would _really_ piss Akira off, and Ryuji’s not quite that much of an asshole to go there yet.

Akira hesitates. “I heard from someone that you got detention?”

Okay, that tears it. “Wow I’m _super_ late for my very important thing that I gotta do,” says Ryuji loudly, but Akira _doesn’t move_. “Dude, get outta my door--”

“First you almost died, and now you’re ignoring everyone, and now detention--”

“What’s it to you?! Get outta my _way_\--”

He gives up on subtle and starts to barge through, figuring if he just _goes _Akira will have to move or risk getting pushed over trying to keep him inside. Ryuji forgets to account for Akira being just as stubborn as he is, and that he’s also been working out with Ryuji for a couple months. Ryuji moves forward, Akira doesn’t get out of the way, and suddenly a bunch of twiggy teenage limbs are tangled up in each other and Akira loses his balance, grabbing the front of Ryuji’s sweatshirt and dragging him down too.

“...Ow.”

Ryuji thinks about saying something snarky, but mostly he feels embarrassed and his head hurts. Akira screwed up his face and is clutching the back of _his_ head. “Oh, shit, shit,” says Ryuji. “Are you okay? You didn’t hit your head too hard, did you?”

“I’m good,” says Akira faintly.

“How many fingers am I holding up? Wait, you need your glasses to see.”

“I do _not_.”

Ryuji hauls Akira back up to a sitting position and checks the back of Akira’s head, and there’s no blood, but Ryuji didn’t go to those mandatory concussion classes for student-athletes for four years straight not to know that you can get a concussion at the drop of a dime, even for something as stupid as this. “Geez. Shit,” Ryuji mutters. “I really screwed up. Let’s get you inside.”

“I’m alright.”

Ryuji sighs. “Okay, fine. I’m alright. You’re alright. Let’s get some lemonade anyway, Ma’s got some in the fridge.”

So for the first time, Akira winds up sitting in Ryuji’s kitchen, looking incredibly dark and slick and put-together as he always does, but somehow even moreso in Ryuji’s dingy, off-white, faded kitchen with the lace curtains that have increasingly trended towards a moldy yellow over the years. “‘s not much,” says Ryuji, handing Akira a glass of the promised lemonade, looking away awkwardly. “I’m really sorry about, uh, yellin’ and stuff. I didn’t mean to.”

“Are you _sure_ you’re okay?” Akira says suspiciously.

Ryuji glares at his own fridge. “_Yes_, holy shit. Kidd was bein’ a little funky, but I promise you don’t gotta _hover_. I’m tryin’ to get better as fast as I can, or whatever ‘better’ is supposed to be. I won’t be dead weight on the team forever. Promise.”

“You’re not dead weight,” says Akira, sounding almost offended on Ryuji’s behalf.

“I won’t be for much longer, yeah.”

“Ryuji, you almost _died_.”

“People keep _sayin’_ that, man, it ain’t gonna change if you say it another twenty times. So what?”

And for one terrible moment, sitting there in Ryuji’s beat-up kitchen, Akira’s face drops--not in shock or anything, but it’s like his whole face and all the ten layers of masks that make it up just go clear through like a crystal window, and at the end of all those ten layers of translucent window-masks is fear. He doesn’t even need to answer Ryuji’s question. From the way Akira’s mouth has opened in a tiny O, maybe Akira _can’t _answer Ryuji’s question, but in a single instant Ryuji just _knows_: The _so what_ is that Akira, Joker, their fearless and esteemed phantom thief leader, is terrified that Ryuji is going to die.

“Oh,” says Ryuji.

Akira hides his eyes and pushes his glasses up. All ten layers of masks fly back up so fast Ryuji can almost see them sliding into place like cards in a magician’s hands. Watch the lady, watch your card, don’t pay attention to the guy doin the tricks. But it’s too late, and Ryuji’s spotted the tell.

Akira clears his throat. Fiddles with his bangs again. “The team is worried,” he says, and suddenly Ryuji can hear him clearly: _I was worried, I am worried_. Ryuji _knew_ that, he knew that Akira was worried and would be worried and he forgot because he decided to stick his head up his own ass instead. “Morgana still doesn’t know what’s going on…” says Akira.

Ryuji stands up, chair screechin’ like it always does on the poor beat up tile floor. “...and it’s not like we don’t have time before the deadline,” Akira keeps going like a bad reflex, and before Akira can do any more shit with his seven proxies pretending to be a face and huge obvious distractions, Ryuji hugs him.

It’s awkward as hell. Akira’s still sitting, and Ryuji isn’t short, so the position is all funky. Ryuji’s bent at a bad angle, somehow making both his back and his leg hurt at the same time. Akira’s half twisted around, like he was trying to turn to face Ryuji but got caught halfway through the motion, and he just _freezes_ like that like he’s never been hugged before. Ryuji squeezes tighter.

“Sorry.”

Akira shifts, arms going up like he doesn’t know what else to do with them. It’s slow, but eventually Akira’s fingers settle onto Ryuji’s shoulders, barely making dents in his jacket. Easily shaken. Like Akira thinks its a crime to hug someone back, so he’s gotta be a phantom thief about it, stealing light touches and warmth that isn’t his.

“Sorry? For what?”

“For real?” Ryuji can’t help but say. “Sorry for being a jackass. I was so busy caught up in my own shit I didn’t even think about you, and then I was a huge asshole when you were just worried.”

“I’m not the one who got attacked.” Akira makes a move like he’s trying to wiggle away, and nope. Nu-uh. They are _in it _now. This is gonna be the bro hug of the century, because Akira has been having a shitty week and he deserves it. Ryuji pulls Akira right out of his chair and hugs him again but bigger and harder. Akira still doesn’t seem to know what to do with his arms (which is hilarious because Ryuji thinks he’s doing a great job of modeling), but Akira also doesn’t actually try that hard to get away, so Ryuji chalks that up as a win for Bro Hug.

“Yeah, but you’re the one who had to see all that, too, right?” Ryuji says, past Akira’s ear, staring at the yellowing curtains and towards the wall of glass of the building next door. “I just didn’t want you to worry about me, but I made you worry anyway. I wanted to be someone who had your back. Ya know?”

Akira’s grip shifts, from hanging off his shoulders to actually putting his arms around Ryuji.

“You already are,” Akira says, into Ryuji’s ear. Soft and quiet, like something so important it can’t be said too loud.

The world, Ryuji thinks, should stop right here. Right now in this kitchen, two teenage boys in a tangle of limbs, looking over each other’s shoulders, watching each other’s backs, feeling the rise and fall of their chests. It feels important. Like- Like something Yusuke should paint. Put it down on canvas in old whites and yellows, with the ink dark color of Akira’s clothes and hair sat in the middle. Ryuji’s arms around him.

But that’s not how time or life works, and Yusuke isn’t there.

Ryuji breaks first. He pulls back and looks Akira in the eyes. “You good?”

He looks back, and Ryuji’s pretty sure that squinty examining sort of look is a copy of his own. “Yeah. You?”

“Yeah.” He means it, too.

Akira springs back from his vaguely shell-shocked look in a second, back to his usual, determined expression. “We’re going to figure this out. I promise.”

Ryuji beams. “Yeah! We will! I’ve got your back, even if I can’t be in the Metaverse right now. We’ve got this together.”

“Together,” says Akira, like he’s pulling the words from Ryuji’s mouth, and he likes what he’s tasting. “Yeah.”

Ryuji feels _pumped, _and he smiles like he used to when the track team talked about going to Regionals. Like when Akira, Ann, Morgana, and him first officially formed the Phantom Thieves. His hands are still around Akira’s upper arms, and Akira doesn’t pull away at all. For a whole second, Ryuji wants to slide his hands down Akira’s arms and hold his hands like a big ol’ sap, and the wildest part is that with the way Akira’s smiling, Ryuji doesn’t even think Akira would stop him.

Hell, just that feeling alone--Ryuji feels like they’re on the top of the world. Ryuji and Akira, just like back when it was just the two of them against Kamoshida and the whole school of Shujin Academy. They’ve got each others’ backs. They’ve got each other. Everything is gonna work out. Ryuji knows it. 


End file.
